Gertrude and Morris. you have such a wild imagination hahah

Nintendogs + Cats and Nintendogs are huge parts of my childhood, ever since I got the Golden Retriever version in 2012! As someone who wasn’t and…still isn’t allowed to have a real dog. Yeah it’s shocking I know, but I didn’t have the luxury of growing up with or ever having a real dog the way every reviewer apparently has. Nintendogs was there for me when I needed it and has a very special place in my heart. Years later and I still love these games and play them, been playing them a lot on my channel lately! My first Nintendog ever, Goldie in + Cats, is over a decade old! + Cats isn’t actually the same experience as the original, there’s quite a few differences if you play both. I can tell you probably haven’t since you don’t mention how + Cats has a similar way of walking as Little Friends, but WAY better since there’s places to go like different areas, parks, the dog cafe, meeting people and their dogs, finding things and stuff Little Friends lacks to make it interesting and memorable. But yes, + Cats has differences from the original: Walking being so much better, dog cafe, seaside park, giving treats directly to the dog, lure coursing (I really wish they kept agility though, it’s my favorite contest), ability to buy and place furniture, the houses not having that weird white fog border, different dog behaviors, etc. Your dog even becomes better behaved on walks over time. In the original I don’t know if they grow better behaved, but it doesn’t feel like it since the reaction to trash is the same every time. But in + Cats, it slowly becomes easier and easier to control them! Goldie is incredibly well behaved on her walks, while newer dogs are harder to convince to not chase birds, eat trash and play in puddles (another new addition, rainy days). Like the original, part of the engagement in + Cats is making progress towards unlocking new things, like new breeds, new houses, and other special rewards! + Cats even features a thank you record with the credits and RoboPups (!!!) as final rewards for a job well done! They could’ve done more with + Cats, yes. There’s things I prefer with the original, such as the contests, contest music and funny commentators. They could’ve kept agility, and the realistic day and night cycle from the original that includes the sunrise, still disappointed + Cats doesn’t. I prefer the collection of records in the original, and how naturally the dogs react to them (for some reason + Cats took the aspect of naturally changing their behavior for a little bit after playing a record away). The original has more unique things to discover on walks, and keeps track of more info such as winning streaks, playtime with each dog, what they last ate, overall contest records with all dogs and their time/points, etc (seriously why didn’t + Cats bring back some of this stuff Nintendo?!?). Things like this make it surprisingly difficult to choose between them, and I only barely love + Cats slightly more. + Cats does such a good job with the houses and places, the lovely nature ambiences, and the puppies and kittens being adorable and fluffy! Cats tend to look weird/ugly in games for some reason, including Little Friends. But not in + Cats! Something I noticed, every video I’ve seen so far discussing Nintendogs treats + Cats like some kind of lame excuse of the original just since it didn’t sell as well, which is really weird. + Cats is such a fantastic and engaging experience (despite what it unfortunately didn’t bring back or expand on) and gave me so many wonderful memories, and it’s so good I keep coming back! I’ve had other pet games, but stopped playing them quickly. None come close to how special + Cats and original Nintendogs are. It’s not nostalgia making me prefer + Cats slightly: I got the original a year or two after + Cats, so both are super nostalgic. I just feel it’s worth pointing out it has as much of a place as the original and has some really amazing improvements, and it’s amazing how life-like the pets are, from the fluffy fur and interesting behaviors to the way their eyes move! Oh, as for Little Friends? I didn’t buy it but saw videos. It was quite annoying seeing people blindly celebrating this thing as the next Nintendogs, yikes. It’s nothing like Nintendogs. It’s so…lazy? Bland? Lifeless? The pets, which strangely look worse than the ones of + Cats, don’t even interact with each other, and everything is so…unnatural. Nintendogs and + Cats made everything feel natural and interesting, such as giving toys to the pets, interacting with them, bath time, the walks, the pets themselves. Little Friends just fails at that, it feels so fake even from a video. That includes the generic boring house, annoying music in place of a nice ambience while relaxing at home, and other things that were only done right in Nintendogs and + Cats. It doesn’t even acknowledge your pet’s gender, just calls them “them”! How far can the laziness go? And it’s not the game’s fault, but the lack of a microphone makes it harder to bond with your pet, though they don’t feel life-like anyway. Little Friends is the standard pet game with nothing making it special. Even the soundtrack in Nintendogs and + Cats is quite good and I enjoy listening to them! There’s a reason the Nintendogs games stood the test of time and are still acknowledged and played. It’s been over a decade since + Cats released and they’re still the greatest pet games of all time. With Puppy Island it’s clearly not what Nintendogs went for. It’s more of, I guess “game” and story based, than just caring for and raising your pets over time. Nothing wrong with that of course, looks like nice entertainment for a while like those other animal games I had in the past. It just isn’t what Nintendogs set out to be. By the way, Gertrude is a girl name lol. Nice review, enjoyed watching! Thanks for not simply declaring Little Friends as the next Nintendogs, it honestly feels just a bit disrespectful to Nintendogs and the people who did such an incredible job with both games.

this is so well put together?? less than 1k views??? keep it up, this is great :D

Nintendogs was my lifeblood when I was a kid, and briefly during quarantine at the height of the pandemic. I played a lot of Dogz too, though that one was far less engaging. It's cool to see what other pet games were like. Thanks for the review. :)

The dogs in the first game look pretty uncanny valley to me. *shudder*. The second's much better looking (and playing, from what you said!), but it still kinda reminds me of seeing the trailer for the detective Pikachu sequel and being shocked that it looks worse than the original 3ds game...I mean, it's not quite that bad, but gives me a similar feeling. Still interesting to hear about these games, though!

Oh man, they didn't even brand it 😂

hey, loved the review! keep it up