it's fine. not the best, but it's fine. I've never been a super big AC fan... and not sure I could see myself going back to past titles after playing this one. the graphics alone are incredibly nice in this game. there are upsides and downsides regardless of which one you're playing. but this game does have a lot of issues. item durability is nonsense. the lack of QoL is ridiculous. a friend of mine is super into this game right now and ended up... sort of getting me interested again? who knows how long that'll last. but it's been long enough that I forgot how slow things are. terraforming is neat, but it's so fucking slow. even slower if you're not standing exactly perfectly while doing it! while you can certainly change your whole island, it takes a lot of time and effort to do. the fact that you can move only one building per day... unless you time travel, holy shit, it'll take you ages if you're like me and decided you needed to move half the buildings on the island. yikes.
and then this game was ditched way too quickly. it's a real shame. I know, I know, pandemic. sure. it's an excuse, and a perfectly valid one. but I think that just makes it all the more depressing. perhaps the game shouldn't have released when it did, as perfect as that timing was.