I haven't finished this. I don't even know what it means to finish an Animal Crossing game, unless you're like my old roommate who collected every single item in New Leaf. I probably won't do that, but I have played for over 100 hours now so hopefully that counts for something.

I don't think this is the ideal version of Animal Crossing. It's leaner than New Leaf in some ways, the crafting system is frequently obnoxious, and Pocket Camp's influence is stronger than I'd like. Still, in the face of everything I like about it, none of that matters; the feeling I get from seeing my favorite villager reading on a bench I placed, surrounded by flowers I planted, can't be matched. It's still the game I fell in love with 20 years ago, lovingly updated.

As my very first Animal Crossing experience, I'm mixed on how I truly feel about New Horizons. On the one hand, I find it rather relaxing to traverse your island, talking to your adorable little villagers, collecting materials and formatting the place to look as exquisite as possible, yet on the other hand, you're running around doing virtual chores for several hours a day, and the loan system can eventually require so much financial investment from you that it can easily turn into grinding of the same things every single day to seemingly no end.

I'm still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I'm having fun with it for the most part, but I can't see this sticking around for much longer. I honestly wish there was a way to just pause time in the game so I could just take a breather from it for a while yet still engage with the special events, as well as not run the risk of losing my villagers, but I understand how that goes against the core philosophy of the game. Enable for New Horizons to continually engage me with its mechanics, it needs to do the following:

1. please explain how long I can go without engaging with the game so I can actually take a damn break but not run the risk of losing villagers
2. let me craft more than one item at a time at benches, as well as let me bulk-buy items at shops/Nook terminals
3. let me have more than one construction project active at a time for god's sake

Seemingly menial changes, I know, but they'd do a lot in honing the pacing of this game. I still really like this game, and may provide further thoughts on it in the future, but this is where I stand now. I like this game, but I'm far from loving it at the moment.

if you're new to animal crossing, it's a long running game series simply about vibing with anthropomorphic animal friends on a personalized island (or a village or city in previous entries). it's one of the most chill games around. the days move in real time and each day brings new interactions, bugs and fish to catch, and new items to buy in the shops, which you can use to decorate your character, your home, and your island. although it's a long-running series, chillness is at its core, and it's a perfectly good starting point for beginners.

new horizons is the fifth entry in the series, and it shakes up the animal crossing formula more than any entry before it, yet it also feels more lesser and barren in ways compared to new leaf. still, it's always a good, relaxing time no matter which animal crossing game.

new horizons is extremely good for the soul. there's still a lot of good new things here and animal crossing has never looked more beautiful, crisp, and vibrant. the music isn't my favorite in the series. while it sets the easy mood, i appreciated the weirdness of the older soundtracks; it's just different.

new horizons ended up coming to the rescue, serving as a virtual hangout space in this weird 2020 spring when a certain global pandemic forced everyone to stay home. i miss seeing my homies in person, but playing new horizons with friends is a fun and expressive experience.

however, nintendo continues their streak of making baffling decisions regarding online play. having to walk across your island to the airport and then having to go through a bunch of dialogue after getting the airport before taking off to a friend's island isn't ideal, and I wish it was drop-in drop-out. every time a friend visits your island, everyone already on the island is forced to stop play and watch a 1-minute long cutscene, and that kinda sucks. get it together, ninty.

the site makes me list it as "completed", but that's not quite true. i've put about 80 hours into it at this point, but since animal crossing is a game that moves in real time with new content and events rolled out through the year, it feels a bit early to finalize my thoughts on it. i'll plan on revisiting this post at the end of the year.

all in all, if you've enjoyed a previous game in the series, you'll like this one too. if you're new, this is a very worthwhile addition to your switch collection and the perfect game to unwind with. i'm looking forward to the peaceful days to come on my sunset isle and to the content updates, events, and holidays yet to come this year.

Finally opened the town hall which seems to be where the game really takes off, so this is a good time to log it I guess.

The most significant upgrade here is the stronger sense of progression, including being able to relocate buildings and change the environment. Long-term goals for the look of your island are actually encouraged by the huge amount of customization, which require money and resources. So idly fishing or chopping trees or visiting random islands can still feel like working toward a goal, and every day it feels like there's something to achieve.

Close second: placing items outside. It's a minor change on paper but kind of transforms the game fundamentally.

And of course every Animal Crossing brings a ton of QOL improvements. My favorites are storage being less tedious and the revamped wardrobe system, which actually makes it fun to change your outfit to suit the time and weather. I barely do that in real life.

I don't know how to rate it. Maybe I'll do it later when I've really explored the terraforming which I still haven't unlocked. For now I think I'm going to be playing this daily for a long time yet.

New Horizons is undoubtedly the biggest shock that the AC formula has ever been given, and while most of the changes were deliberate attempts at strengthening the long-term promise of Animal Crossing, the expense comes in the form of vibrancy, especially from the start.

The lack of a Main Street/City, or any attempt at filling in for it, makes this game feel barren when comparing it to New Leaf. Many mainstay NPCs (Shrunk, Harriet, Leif) have been essentially outsourced for things that either you can do from the start or things that other NPCs can double-up on. The game's progression is also languidly paced, leaving your island untouched for days on end while you're tasked with chopping wood and smacking rocks. There is an irony in how lonely it can get in a game about building a place for people to live. If I hadn't had friends playing this alongside me, I would've torn my hair out a week earlier.

And while all of these early-game problems pale in comparison to the time you can spend building out, I simply don't think New Horizons has the foundation to support this way of playing as it stands. It could gain something with time, as I'm sure Nintendo will give it the Splatoon/Smash treatment, but aside from the occasional QoL change, this game is currently a framework at best.

Despite being with the series since the Gamecube, I'm left feeling like this game was made for a completely different "kind" of Animal Crossing fan. If you're the type to uproot your towns and redecorate it from top to bottom, then this game is the 2nd Coming. Personally, I think I might begin "forgetting" to do my daily chores a little quicker than usual.

Good:
+It's Animal Crossing. It's hard to explain exactly what makes Animal Crossing fun in words because it sounds boring on paper. But it's fun, okay?
+The new home editor mode makes customising your house so much easier and more fluid.
+The ability to fully customise your island really helps bring out your creative side.
+There's some really neat visuals, like the wardrobe screen when changing clothes.
+The museum looks beautiful now
+Villagers seem more alive and have more random actions they do around the island

Cons:
-There are some massive quality of life improvements that this game lacks.
-For some reason you have to donate bugs/fish/fossils 1 by 1 during start of game until the museum opens up.
-Can’t craft multiple items at once.
-Breakable tools. Seriously this isn't just the lack of a quality of life thing, it's something they specifically made worse in this entry compared to older ones.
-I've never been a fan of AC's turnip system. Feels like a broken mechanic that just allows you to get insane profit with no effort due to the fact you can buy and sell from ANY island. Due to timezones (or even just time skipping) if you find a player who has a high turnip selling price, while your island has them to purchase, you can literally just make back and forth trips for infinite money.
-For some reason the little indication of what items are customisable is only present at certain times, like in the crafting menu. It isn't present in the inventory or your house storage, so I had to make multiple trips and pocket changes switching items in and out just to find out what I could customise. The fact that a little icon DOES exist in some places just makes it more noticeable that it's missing from other places.
-Trying to set up to travel anywhere, be it a friends island or nook miles island, takes way too long. Supposedly it's just a fancy loading screen, but in that case my complaint is the loading times in this game are atrocious.
-The shop closes at 10pm and they have a little box outside that let's you sell for 80% of their original price...and you only get the money the next day. Why would I ever sell things for less price if I could just keep them in my storage and sell them for full price the next day? If you got the money straight away the 80% would make sense, but there's no logical reason to use it as it is now.
-Can’t build and demolish bridges/inclines at the same time. For example I wanted to destroy the wooden bridge you essentially make as a tutorial and replace it with a better one, but it turns out demolishing an item not only takes a day, but you can't even build a new thing at the same time, so it took 3 days for me to finally get a single bridge (1 day for the bridge to be removed, 1 day to set up the new bridge location and 1 day for it to actually be built)
-The house editing mode is unavailable outside, meaning you still have to place items the old fashion way which can be very imprecise and finicky.

Notes:
•Despite that huge list of cons I still rated it fairly highly... Like I said, Animal Crossing is a hard game to really sell to someone.

at the time of writing this i am no closer to "completing" new horizons than i was when i had first arrived on the island. it's not a game about completion; it's a fantasy of a slightly less chaotic world. nintendo's own genre for this game is simulation -- indeed, it's a simulation of life with its annoyances refined, reinvented, upon which they become tolerable and even comfortable. here you rip up weeds, cut down and grow trees, plan intricate flower fields all while struggling to get a basic set of matching furniture. your tools crumble into dust while your list of chores grows, but you find yourself seemingly enthralled with and by organizing this cute, miniaturized world. it is a game of conquering little goals, and at the end creating your own paradise, so it's not going to be for everyone. but if it's for you, enjoy your momentary hyper-fixation. i know i did!