This game is.. REALLY hard to talk about? It's a game that most of us experienced during the start of the pandemic and had fond memories of, albeit, bittersweet memories of playing it and maybe even visiting friend's islands online. But uh.. I think most of us are in agreement this is a weak entry in the AC series? We all know the story.

We all agree on a few things. Like, this game is really pretty. Just an all around nice looking game with good lighting and attention to detail. It's still animal crossing too, with a lot of quality of life improvements and more options than ever. Also with great new reactions, I love those.

But uh.. woof this games "new" content is.. all sour. And the building system... sucks so fucking much. Terraforming and making bridges and stairs is honestly dreadful. Paths? One at a time? Not a chance in hell. THE CRAFTING? THE RECIPIES THAT ARE BAD? THE INABILITY TO CRAFT IN B U L K??? THE GOD DAMN LIMITATIONS.

..And worst of all, the updates were just adding the things that weren't at launch, we all know this. All there on New Leaf at launch, all absent here, added in updates.

It's just.. this game isn't bad? It's bad for animal crossing, no doubt, but this is still a very enjoyable game. It's cute. Customizing your island is really charming and it's simply a nice cozy game. But it's quality? I don't know, it can be dreadful, but I don't think its worth calling a game that's just decent terrible. Disappointing? Yeah. Good for when it came out? Absolutely. Remembering when I played it when people were dying of COVID-19

...

bad.

Someday... someday, Florida II will be complete.

I started playing this game a couple years after its release and subsequent popularity. Though I was late to the party, I enjoyed it nonetheless. I was living in a different state at the time, in the middle of a cold winter that I was not at all used to, being raised in Florida. This game let me have my own little slice of home I could pull out whenever I needed it. The customization is its biggest flex. I can, will, and have spent hours using the custom design function to pixel-paint my own artwork so I can then wear it or display it or even slap it on an existing item. The reason it isn't full-stars is because, well, it is tedious at times. If you have multiple of one personality of villager on your island, it kinds ruins the magic seeing the same dialogs over and over for both of them. But these are far from enough to ruin it for me.

(Also I love playing this while listening to the front bottoms or the mountain goats, it gives me such good brain damage from the whiplash highly recommend)

Being able to build our own town was honestly so amazing. This game was so fun during covid. I don't play it as much as I used to, but I login here and there. I wish the music didn't sound so similar. There were only a few tracks that stuck to me. I wish there was more to do when friends came over. I've never played previous AC titles, besides NL, but NL had Tortimer Island, which included minigames that you could do with friends. You can invent your own games, such as musical chairs, but I wish something similar to the minigames that NL had were included.
Just like NL, NH has a bit of an issue with villagers repeating a bunch of dialogue. When you are first starting out, it's not very noticeable, but it gets stale fast. In the future, it'd be nice to have more dialogue options.

A wish I have is to see villagers have sub-personalities too! Like, instead of cranky's having an 'old-man that has brittle bones' persona, there could be 'grumpy teen', 'old man', etc personalities if that makes sense.