This is a great sequel in the Happy Home series. I was hesitant to buy any paid DLC, because most DLC doesn't seem worth the price, but comparing it to the original Happy Home game, it was pretty much worth it, I also had a couple gold coins saved up and it knocked off $4 for me.
The amount of things you can do now doesn't feel so limited. In Designer, you couldn't really change much of the home layout on the fly, but you can do that now in Paradise. The fact this is connected to the main game and not separate makes this better, because you can now earn items in the DLC to take back to your island.
This is the thing that got me back into playing a game I felt was unfinished at launch. Along with the huge update, I do believe without Happy Home Paradise being in development, we wouldn't have gotten what we have now.

DLC to the degree that Happy Home Paradise is, always stumps me in a matter of whether it should be consider a full game or not. While I don't think most people would have bought this game as a standalone, as DLC it absolutely works despite the fact it's also effectively it's own game. And in that sense, it kinda dives into a deeper problem with the way DLC has been opt'd in compared to the far superior "expansion content" that we yearned for in yesteryear. I don't want to go into a big debate about it, but download content like Happy Home Paradise works far more as an expansion of Animal Crossing: New Horizions and succeeds as it's own story and narrative to tell.

So much of Happy Home Paradise works because the way it expanses both New Horizons gameplay, and the previous game spin off, Happy Home Designer. Happy Home Academy was an interesting spin off that focused on home decor, but it honestly just didn't encourage the player to stay too much in the lines of what the client wanted, and due to having a lower amount to customize both inside and out, became repetitive around the half way point. While HHP still has the problem of repetitive design making, the pacing itself is spread just enough to keep you interested till the campaign itself is actually done. From simply withholding certain abilities, to gaining access to certain villagers, and mostly just expanding the catalogue that you have to fill each villagers vacation homes.

By the time that you feel like you know everything there is to know about designing, the game basically opens up to the point where you can simply choose villagers that you like, and make their home for them. While I can't say Happy Home Designer didn't try to make the novelties from Paradise work, as the game is mostly a blur to me, the bigger part to why Paradise works so well is how it expands the list of things you can do in New Horizons itself. By the simple part that HHP is meant to be more of a expansion of New Horizons, so to would it give you more things to do in your New Horizons island. From simply making vacation homes for your villagers, buying new furniture, and of course, designing their homes on your island. On top of all this, Paradise even makes use of the facilities that you make on the island by giving you various rewards for checking in daily or simply just new places to hang out. In a lot of ways, Paradise is a much better sequel to Designer on the simple fact it actually feels rewarding to do your job and earn new stuff for your island compared to just making something pretty.

I think Happy Home Paradise could only simply be a expansion on New Horizons, and never a standalone game for the simple reason that you want to feel like the game is rewarding. While I understand a lot of people will simply love the amount of customization you can do in this content, the major selling point for most will be all the added features that help New Horizon islands. In that way, Paradise easily surpasses Designer's legacy by giving me more to care about aside from a small narrative story. While Paradise does have a nice little narrative story on it's own, the simply truth is that it never really gets to an interesting point that would really make you yearn for more. Happy Home Paradise is completely something that only fans of New Horizons would want, and in that respect, it absolutely delivers.

While designing houses is initially (and still can be) a lot of fun, 30 houses is far too high of a requirement to beat the game, and the monotony for me kicked in at only around a third of the way through the DLC. No matter how much they try to break it up, it just ends up being a really repetitive rinse and repeat to get the 30 houses + facilities done to see the ending.

The designing itself is still really fun when isolated in a vacuum by doing it in small doses, and I really love the supporting cast and unique dialogue opportunities this brings to villagers, but you just really can't skirt around how repetitive the designing gets in the end. Something good that's unfortunately brought down by repeating it so much to the point where by the end, the initial fun has long vanished.

This DLC fills a gap in the gameplay loop of the main game and should've been there from the beginning. Imo this DLC + the 2.0. edition of the main game as one package would've been a worthy successor to New Leaf. But as it stands right now, it's all a little too late to keep me invested in the game long term. It's very fun while it lasts tho.

I actually have only one big problem with this: Reaching the 30 completed interior designs necessary to "complete" the DLC gets a little tedious, sadly, because the themes you get are just so similiar to each other. There are a lot of requests just asking for design themed around sea or plants or the vague word 'relaxation' where you kinda get the same furniture to design them with. It's helpful you can pick between five different requests because, especially after 20 designs or so, like 3 of them are something you already kinda did - which can get very boring if you are forced to do them (which I was three times).

There are some very fun themes tho, and the designing process is a blast, especially after unlocking all the tools the game adds to the editor. On that front, they really outdid themselves: everything is easy to use, intuitive and you have all the features you could possibly want - except being able to decorate partition walls, please, let me decorate partition walls. The story this time around is also very cute.

Pretty much a new version of a previous spin-off game that allows you to use new design options in the main game, which is actually a pretty decent way to do paid DLC for Animal Crossing.

It suffers slightly from AC's already pretty unwieldy menus and classic unnecessary Nintendo rigidity on how some items can and can't be placed but there's something really quite calming about taking on a new housing assignment every few days. There's good variation in the themes given to you while items and feature unlocks are doled out at a decent rate, allowing you to do your own thing and also update previous builds as you unlock more.

i feel like some of this content should have been in the 2.0 update to the base game as opposed to dlc only. the furniture store, for example, feels kind of egregious since people have been asking about a nook's cranny update or gracie's return since launch.

it's fun. a little over-priced, and slightly too long, but the charm is all there and i had a big, goofy smile on my face when i saw what they did for the credits. designing facilities in particular was very, very fun. i wish we could do that on our main island, but i get the limitations with that.

the aesthetic island tours would be lit beyond belief tho

New Horizons is one of my favorite games of the last few years, so I was excited when this DLC was announced. While there is a lot of charm here, the designing begins to feel repetitive after a short while, even with the variety of furniture and themes.

One of my main issues with the game is that once I finished designing a home, there was no reason to visit it again. There's a disconnect that comes from spending time and effort putting together a good design, only to have it reduced to a screenshot and be quickly forgotten.

I still had a good enough time with Happy Home Paradise, but there's a lot of unrealized potential to this formula.

This is some of the best content in the entire Animal Crossing: New Horizons experience.

It’s a massive update that basically becomes a full new game. I’ve gotta hand it to ‘em, they sure knew how to get me to jump back into New Horizons. Plus I made one of the houses into an Olive Garden restaurant.

And, as someone who mostly plays games in the middle of the night, it’s nice that there’s at least one part of New Horizons that isn’t impacted by the time of day.