YeoBish
2019
In order to move forward, you must recognize your mistakes without shackling yourself to the past. Disco Elysium is a stunning achievement in game design and narrative. It pushes the medium forward in ways that few games dare to. I loved every bit of it.
Grating, pointless, a time suck -- these are all descriptors I would've used for Animal Crossing: New Horizons upon setting down the game in April 2020. It was a frustrating experience in part because I so wanted to love the game. The refined Chibi aesthetic, real-time management gameplay, and collection aspects were all appealing coming from Stardew Valley (into which I've sunk 100+ hours).
Where I was mistaken was in approaching ACNH as clay to be molded by my hands. The game is rigid in its systems, to the point of being archaic. As an example, turning in fossils requires you to open up your inventory, click on each individual fossil, present them to Blathers for assessment, and listen to his spiel. Following his (lengthy) diatribe, he hands your fossils back to you and you have to repeat to process to actually turn them in. The User Experience of this whole exchange is in direct conflict with the goals of the player, and makes the process tedious rather than rewarding.
New Horizons is littered with examples like this, and it is clearly designed in such a way that these roadblocks are intentional. I believe the intended effect is to slow the player down and help them appreciate the real-time aspect of the game. An admirable goal, but the halting of all progress when a villager comes to visit your island, while you wait through the painfully long loading screen does nothing to help me appreciate the systems.
With my frustration building over my first 60 hours in the game, I reached a breaking point at the Bunny Day holiday. I put the game down and didn't touch it for nearly a year. In the meantime, my best friend's wife found out she had breast cancer at 21, and as a means of distraction from the pain she experienced in everyday life, she picked up a Switch and New Horizons.
Over the past year, she has put over 300 hours into the game, When I asked what she enjoyed about it, she said she appreciated how she got to see her village grow over time from her direct actions, and that she got to play it with her husband and they could grow together. She's thankfully in remission and the cancer is gone from her body, but her love for Animal Crossing stuck with me. If this game could be so affecting to her, then maybe I misjudged it.
I picked it back up recently, and was surprised to find out I was not that far from finishing the game. I did some beautification work, KK Slider showed up, and I rolled credits. I've since done some landscaping and such, but I feel I've left my island content with my experience. While it may not have left the mark on me that it has for many other people, I can feel the magic just under the surface that keeps so many people coming back.
Where I was mistaken was in approaching ACNH as clay to be molded by my hands. The game is rigid in its systems, to the point of being archaic. As an example, turning in fossils requires you to open up your inventory, click on each individual fossil, present them to Blathers for assessment, and listen to his spiel. Following his (lengthy) diatribe, he hands your fossils back to you and you have to repeat to process to actually turn them in. The User Experience of this whole exchange is in direct conflict with the goals of the player, and makes the process tedious rather than rewarding.
New Horizons is littered with examples like this, and it is clearly designed in such a way that these roadblocks are intentional. I believe the intended effect is to slow the player down and help them appreciate the real-time aspect of the game. An admirable goal, but the halting of all progress when a villager comes to visit your island, while you wait through the painfully long loading screen does nothing to help me appreciate the systems.
With my frustration building over my first 60 hours in the game, I reached a breaking point at the Bunny Day holiday. I put the game down and didn't touch it for nearly a year. In the meantime, my best friend's wife found out she had breast cancer at 21, and as a means of distraction from the pain she experienced in everyday life, she picked up a Switch and New Horizons.
Over the past year, she has put over 300 hours into the game, When I asked what she enjoyed about it, she said she appreciated how she got to see her village grow over time from her direct actions, and that she got to play it with her husband and they could grow together. She's thankfully in remission and the cancer is gone from her body, but her love for Animal Crossing stuck with me. If this game could be so affecting to her, then maybe I misjudged it.
I picked it back up recently, and was surprised to find out I was not that far from finishing the game. I did some beautification work, KK Slider showed up, and I rolled credits. I've since done some landscaping and such, but I feel I've left my island content with my experience. While it may not have left the mark on me that it has for many other people, I can feel the magic just under the surface that keeps so many people coming back.
2015
I got to Rom, beat her, then my save corrupted so I gave up. Now 5 years later and the game’s frame pacing feels awful after playing Demon’s Souls and I can’t bring myself to finish it.