This thread has already slowed. In ACNL we played together pretty much every night or when we could. NH gives very little incentive to play multi beyond exchanging fruit.
I won't make any final judgements, especially without town hall complete yet, but so far my verdict on New Horizons is that it's an under cooked, rushed product. Which is shocking considering the long development time. It's good for scrstching the animal crossing itch and while it does new, interesting things with the formula it also slowed progress and pacing of the overall gameplay loop to a crawl. If you want to fish or shovel, be prepared to make a new one, repeatedly. While you can offset this by customizing and resetting your count to 0, how many times do you know you've used the tool?
I think I just achieved all of today's goals.
So far:
- no town rating score so little reason for upkeep
- The game is clearly for AC vets, not newbies. It doesn't teach AC fundamentals like keeping a town clean, keeping villagers happy. Bebpo doesn't even know you can attach gifts to letters.
- complete backslide in terms of content and variety of content from new leaf such as the lack of Tortimer Island
- the gameplay is scatter shot. Sometimes it feels like the formula has been perfected. Other times it feels like it's more tedious than you ever recall animal crossing being.
- lack of animals even after a week. Animal Crossing is known for its electic cast of characters: Resetti, that fucking bitch ass duck at the post office, Tortimer, Isabelle, KK. Animal crossing has so many cute characters to fall in love with. Why they decided to go with a deserted island with none of the tried and true animal crossing staples is beyond me. Yeah you need to work for it to get the cute here. Meanwhile in NL Isabelle greets you daily. NH is still empty as fuck.
It's a mixed bag. Still fun and scratches the itch but New Leaf it is not.
I predict players to drop off far more faster than with NL. One great thing about NL is that it always transparently gave you goals to strive forward: residents want a better town so let's build a bridge. This public work will improve production. Or keep the environment clean. No such thing in NH. Oh, we are going to upgrade the tent to a town hall. Okay. That wasn't a goal. It was just a random change.
Tbh it just makes me want to play new leaf instead.
Poor sequel and follow up to the game that blew Animal Crossing up tbh. I expect massive backlash in the coming weeks.
