I remember the streamers going into dream towns and reporting them if they had star trees. It was really cringe since it didn't hurt anyone. I really hope star trees become a thing

It annoys me when people get mad at modders or time-travelers for “cheating.” It’s a single player, non-competitive game, if people want to have fun with their star fragment trees, recolored villagers, and quicker game progress, then let ‘em. The only exception is obviously when people are hurt/distressed by it, like having their items stolen. A non-competitive game literally can’t be cheated in, it’s up to what the player makes of the game. Putting pressure on people for just doing what they want on their OWN island makes zero sense

It's always interesting seeing people's preferences for Animal Crossing games. When it comes to New Horizons, I also struggle to get to five stars, but it's for the opposite problem - I prefer my island to keep that wild, natural feel of the early game and the OG gamecube, so I don't like having too many decorations and random stuff placed for the sake of being there. And why do we get penalized for having too many trees? Didn't this game used to be called Animal _Forest_ in Japanese? Ain't my fault I think trees are prettier than rows and rows of flowers (though no salt to anyone who does).

Not to mention that the grass deterioration made it impossible to make snowman because you needed snowy areas which didn’t pile up on dirt

The villagers moving out no matter what I did made me understand that you can do everything in the world to try to force people into your decision for them, but you can't stop them. This was right after my parents separated and helped me not feel guilty for the separation or trying to prevent it.

The thing with the star fragment trees is that you could get them without modding your own switch, if someone modded in a star fragment tree you could go pick it up and plant it on your island and it will still be a star fragment tree. So a majority of people who got banned from having a dream address didn't even mod, they simply bought it with in-game currency or were gifted them.

I agree that the stars in New horizon are a miss. I love the mechanic in general and working towards getting 5 stars. But new horizon was oddly restrictive but also too easy? Like requiring a special number of objects and fences but not caring at all for teraforming or design was weird. I hit 5 stars accidentally by holding fish for flick

The ONLY thing that sucks about the weeds in NH ... is when theyre grown; they actually look nice

It's not a 5 star island unless it operates at 2 frames per decade

Am i the only one who really LOVES weeds? I love the wild nature aesthetic of it, and no weeds just make your AC towns look way too clean 😅

I hated the grass deterioration so much in city folk I did not run at all in my New Leaf game unless I was in town. I would put paths down, but I still just refused to run because I truly hated how the ground looked when the grass got ruined. I do not miss that feature at all

In animal crossing new leaf, mods could also let you pocket or drop rocks, trees and rafflesias. It was a common occurrence of having a hacker visit that they dropped rocks around the train station so nobody could go in and out! Thankfully, Nintendo let players sit on rocks on the welcome amiibo and many players could access it again. Also, other "good" hackers often helped those people by removing the hazards placed.

I remember when I got Wild World like a couple or three years ago and I got Tangy in my town. I absolutely fell in love with her, she became my absolute favourite. Then I missed one day and she had moved out during that *one* day I didn't login. I was crushed lol. So glad I got her on ACNH tho, still love her lmao

The problem with the weeding service in NH is that you have to have over 300 weeds on your island, and your island won't naturally spawn that many weeds. So you have to plant extra if you want the weeding service!

For me, ACNL moving out never was much of an issue, personally every time I tell them to stay they’re like “whoa! Didn’t know you cared that much” and they stay

You could also get your Wild World game ruined by hackers who got seeds in their inventory. The seeds spawn buildings and normally can’t be accessed in game. Sometimes people would hack them into their bag, visit someone else’s town and drop them. Random stuff would spawn and block entrances and things.

This might just be me, but I think it'd be pretty cool if the Rafflesia was turned into a decorative plant. I'm probably one of the few people who'd think this, but I actually think it looks somewhat cool, plus Imagine if you're one of those people who have dump sites set up for the city lore, than it'd be cool to plant Rafflesias in that area.

I can live with the weeds, but coming back to Wild World after a break and finding ALL your flowers gone is heartbreaking. Every single one of my 100+ hybrid flowers poofed into thin air 😭

The "city folk hacker incident" also happened in Wild World, but WORSE. There was this mechanic called "seeding" and you could basically just put structures in people's islands and make their game crash so hard you have to edit your save file if you add too much

imo, how stars shouldve worked is it can go up and down UNTIL you reach 5 stars, making it a challenge to get there. but once youre there, youre there and can do whatever with your island without penalty

Fun Fact: The Pokémon "Vileplume" is based on the Rafflesia as well. It's poison-grass type and is known to smell bad.

In ACNL, I had gotten a new cartridge after mine broke so I understood the game already. When I found the perfect fruit, I immediately went to go plant it, did, and the next day a house had moved in right where I had planted the sapling. Perfect fruit, GONE

Wisp is actually very useful in new horizons as it allows you to get a random item not in your catalog.

Ah yes the New Leaf random placement. I was happy, when they didn't allowed the houses to be placed on tiles that the player placed. I literally placed grass tiles all over the place and left the squares for the houses. This worked very well I I got a very organiced town :D

6:45 I actually once lost ALL of my apple trees in my town because a villager thought it’d be funny to plop their house right on the chunk of land that acted as my apple orchard.

I rarely played NH but I did play NL for a while and the tragedy of Julian moving in front of my house when I had plans of building fountains and such right there was such a painful experience. Julian is one of my favorites and getting him was amazing, and so I was depressed to let him move away. I haven’t touch NL since. AC requires too much motivation that I just don’t have sadly, but man I would love to build cities. I always make my homes into fancy hotels.

I think the creative type of modding is completely fine since you're not really abusing any mechanics

I have no frickin idea how you function in an island like that That's just seems like too much of everything I don't know, maybe I just like the openness

In New leaf I planted a bamboo plant and then left for like a year. After I came back it was a mess of bamboo everywhere

I hope star trees become real one day! My island got reported for having a star tree, a birthday gift from a friend. It really was heartbreaking but it wasn’t banned but I closed my island down for safety Now I have a new island named StarryFalls Cottage core/A little FairyCore

As someone who grew up with ONLY wild world and city folk, New Horizons being so easy to control feels like it's not even animal crossing anymore. Especially the aspect of moving houses and buildings wherever you'd like and controlling who stays and leaves. I'm not saying they're bad but they feel SO far removed from how I grew up playing. I like it but it feels like a completely different game. It felt more realistic in a sense that one day your friend would just move away one day. I was also way less stressed about not having so much control over my island. I'm so overwhelmed by the game now and I get so unhappy with my island and discouraged to play after 3 stars. I don't remember ever feeling that way in city folk, even though I would have loved the ability to put furniture outside.

The star trees were so cute and did no harm it’s sad they banned them

Wasn’t grass deterioration in Wild World, too? I remember that my town ended up really barren bc coming from the original, I had no idea that running was now a crime 😂 I always meant to look into whether or not they actually changed the move out mechanic in New Leaf with the Welcome Amiibo update. I had huge breaks in NL now, sometimes a year or more, and I haven’t randomly lost any villager since Welcome Amiibo very much like New Horizons 🤔

about getting your island to five stars, i've just given up lmao i'm doing a tropical resort themed island and isabelle told me i needed more tree variation. like i'm sure there's certain parts that cedar or hardwood trees would fit in but she said that when like maybe 1/5 of my island was done and it still had all these normal trees so idk lol

I remember the first and (for now) only time I got a perfect island in NH was when I had a section of my island become my scorpion hoard for Flick. I don't understand what requirements were met for that.

I disagree with some of these things being punishments… animal crossing as a whole was never about having an ultra manicured town until new horizons came out. It had always been a game about going with the flow of life, making friends along the way, and never running from your responsibilities (many of the NPCs backstories have similar themes). Villagers in new leaf spawning in to random locations wasn’t a punishment- that’s how the franchise always worked up until new horizons. Rafflesia was just a cool easter egg to discover if you did lots of tt or didn’t bother with weed picking.

This video just made me remember my personal Animal Crossing hot take that being: I don't like New Leaf like at all. I got Wild World as kid fell in love with it and played it to no end (I had no Wii as a kid so no City Folk for me) and so I begged my adoptive dad to get me New Leaf launch-day which I got and was hyped for especially with my best friend playing too and at first I enjoyed my time the childhood wonder from Wild World was gone sure to be expected I was a teen by now but it was fine to be expected really. But I got bored super quickly and my friend was like decorate your town you'll enjoy it and I just hated it, it was so boring to me I barely managed to get any Bells making it even harder. So I just resetted the game over and over again playing the very short early game and then dropping the game I even sold it by now. So come New Horizons I wasn't interested I didn't even want to buy it initially yet I relented in the end my best friends excitement and some trailers peeking my interest and so I bought it and I enjoy it even now sure the lack of some core features when the game came out sucked but I didn't really mind it felt like getting eased back into my the old familiar flow of things sure I still miss things like my villagers having any deep personality but even that only bothers me slightly so I'm excited for the next title although that might take forever to come

All these older features were, for me at least, what brought a little bit on unpredictability into the game and made a big part of it's longevity. Just like in real life, where not everything goes to my will only. I lost some favorite villagers, yes. But i found new favorites who moved in. Back then the villagers had some personality, which was smoothed in NL and totally erased in NH. The older games had a certain charm to them. NH is just a glorified Dollhouse, pretty but lifeless. Like Instagram, only the Looks of something matter. Same with the villagers. I like some of the considered ugly ones, because i remember their personality from older games. It's a shame that Nintendo thinks, Kids and YA these days can't handle a little bit of sass. NH is the least played game of the series for me. For modding, if it can corrupt an uninvolving players savefile by visiting a hacked island, than yeah it should be banned. Generally speaking i don't care what others do to their islands though.

Thanks to welcome Amiibo, the villagers won’t move on top of custom designs. So if you put them EVERYWHERE the villagers will only move into the open spots you left. But make sure you leave a spot open or they will just move in at random

i remember playing acww as a kid and jitters was one of my starting villagers. he was my favourite for the longest time and stuck around for years. then one day i got a letter saying he was gone and i genuinely cried

It's actually illegal to mod hardware or software in Japan. Nintendo tries to enforce this as law around the world.

if nintendo actually bans your console, you get no notice and they will not unban it no matter what. i got the runaround for awhile with nintendo telling me GAMESTOP could unban my switch and gamestop being like "uh... no? that's all nintendo."

I have an abstract, overfilled, low loading frame rate island and might I just say…. I am mind blown 🤯 I always thought the mechanic was based around plants and having more. Never thought furniture and placement could affect your stars.

That's how I notice the difference in gameplay because I kinda like weeds, I really wanted to have a Rafflesia on my Island and I really don't care about the rating of the Island, I don't even know what it brings to the game 😂

Looks at the breeding patch I have specifically for weeds because I have a forest themed island

really wish they would keep adding things to keep you playing i.e if you got all the sea creatures or bugs or dinosaurs they need to do like a challenge or something

the one time i time travelled in new leaf (it was to get sables sewing machine for paths) my favorite villager moved away and i swore off of time traveling since then

How has the lore gotten so deep

I was 10 years old and would time travel 99 years multiple times in wild world just to make bells. My poor child self didn’t know it would engulf my island in weeds 😭

I remember my cousins and I used to all travel to one town in wild world and clear the weeds bc it took all of us to do it lol

I may be biased (hacked 3ds + wii u), but tbh? I don't think people should get repercussions for modding their consoles unless they're using it to cause harm.

1:19 same thing happened in the gamecube edition when it came to weeds, 2 weeks off and all the acres are covered. eventually I gave up trying to get the golden tool for weeding because of it. i'd always miss a weed or 2 in an acre somewhere. I think the gamecube one was worse because trees close to the tracks would often obstruct weeds, plus there were so many acres to check.

talking about star rating i play only 1.5 month at this point and what im thinking is i cant be bothered with getting stars and dont see myself doing it in a long time, since i want it to be like a forest with a bit of weeds and little to no fences and isabelle wont like that and i just want to have fun even if my island sucks and i wont get the golden tool recipy

I hate having only 3 stars because I have “too many trees” but I happen to have a lot of fruit trees plus I like all my trees….

The 4 to 5 star rating change for that one block was because there is a rule where you can’t have too many items cluttered together in a 8 square radius. So to avoid that it would be ideal to space out your objects…

aren't Rafflesia flowers also called something like 'corpse flowers' because, in real life, they smell like rotting flesh? No wonder people comment on how they're awful. The Pokemon Vileplume is also based on one of these flowers. Truly disgusting, and I'm glad I'm a coward who resets every time I take a long break from one of my older games.

this video made me so grateful for all the overlooked features new horizons brought

man, ive been playing new leaf lately, and let me tell you, the villagers house placement is outrageously annoying..... ankha just moved in recently, RIGHT in front of my bus stop, and kiki moved in awhile ago literally like a space off from being right in front of one of my bridges..... incredibly irritating, but i do enjoy having less control over my villagers. it makes them feel like real residents of my town!

Only animal crossing youtuber I watch. A game series I like blended with a fun and informational video format. I'll be here when you make more :3

Animal Crossing City Folk was my first Animal Crossing game!! Heck, me, my Brother and my sister played it all the time. Later each day, we of course saw the the grass gone and instead, there was path. The problem is that we kept running everywhere, and one day. The grass was completly gone, we thought that if we stopped playing for 1 week or 2 would make the grass come back. But it didn't, we stopped playing for a year, unfortunatly it never came back. We thought it was the best to start all over again, so we did. We made our characters, placed our houses, etc. We were more careful this time, each day we'd take a different path. Eventually, the grass was gone, but not completly. We kept taking the exact same path now. Until our Wii died 5 years ago, we forgot about every game we've had. One day, we got it back, wich was 1 or 2 years ago. We wanted to check Animal Crossing, thinking it was now a ghost town. But nothing had changed, we eventually got bored since we know had Animal Crossing New Horizons. We still have it, but my brother literally stopped playing because of Mapple💀

I will say that I always hated how moving was handled in previous games. The first three barely gave you any control over who gets to leave and who stays. Even if you do get the chance to give them the big NO, they sometimes will still just move anyway, which was very frustrating. New Leaf gave basically forced the villagers stay if you said no to their moving request, but the problem is that the cooldown for the next villager wanting to move was EXTREMELY short. Like, two days, even the next day, there will be another villager asking to move away. It always bothered me. Also, in all games prior to New Horizons, you can end up loosing a villager just from not playing the game, which can be very stressful if you don't want a certain villager to leave. Luckily, they seemed to do a good job with the moving system in New Horizons, though I will say that it's a shame the villagers will be in boxes the next day after telling them they could leave, and don't even write you a letter when they leave. But that is really not anywhere near as big of a problem compared to the stress that the previous games could give.

lmfao i'm so glad you and your wife were able to figure out the rating problem for the island, that is incredibly frustrating but it's also really sweet that you helped her get it fixed

I was sad when prince moved out because he was my favorite villager and he was like my child

Yes! Villager's wanting to leave is so sad. Bones was my favourite villager in my old game and he kept trying to move out and I'd talk him out of it but one day I logged in and he'd gone 😭

Rafflesias are so cool though, I honestly wish you could force them to spawn somehow.

Why is the segment titled Rafelsia and why does he say it like that?? It’s Rafflesia. It’s a real plant. Just google a spelling it’s not hard oml

you're just improving with every vid!! great job elijah :D this was a nice casual watch

I get why Nintendo gets upset about modding, it’s like taking an artists painting then drawing something on it yourself in a way. I totally get it. I really do, but I think once you have every item in the game I think you should be rewarded star trees! I think that would be a great way to reward players, and make it not so cheatsy because you wouldn’t have any use for the stars or make the trees have a different kind of star that cannot be crafted into items since that aspect of it is kinda cheatsy. They look adorable and would be great on my island but I don’t like modding unless it’s skyrim and I like my online privileges 😂

When I time traveled on Wild World, I stopped receiving mail from villagers. It was nuts

I wish it was easier to get villagers to leave, like simply complaining about them to Isabelle

I wish there was a way in new horizons to get rid of a villager quickly. Maybe the cost of that being other villagers want to leave as well because you're being mean to a villager they like

Thank you for acknowledging the older games as towns. It bothers me so much when people who have only played New Horizons call what is actually a town an island and have no idea what they are talking about in the video. It's always apparent when no one has actually played the other games but it's refreshing to see an actually knowledgeable and intimate AC video about other games in the series

As for the "Overloaded Islands" one... My problem was always the opposite end of the spectrum, as, in my opinion, things look too busy or cluttered when there's a ton of stuff. But if you don't have a ton of stuff, it's so hard to get the rating. People going for less "everything on display" themes, if you can call them that, or themes with more "overgrown/rustic" aesthetics and not as much reliance on the items you'd buy from the stores have SO much of an issue in New Horizons....

You’re one of my favourite animal crossing KZfaqr

To be honest in terms of New Horizon, Modding is pretty harmless but i can see why it would not be wanted. people seeing your town and being super excited for something like "Oh i want that how did they/you get it!" oh sorry you cant i cheated it in. would kill the excitement for something new to get for someone, which in that way i think Modding is terrible.

Honestly, kinda wish the Rafelsia would come back, but as a shovelable item. That mechanic could be useful with it attracting bugs and all. Maybe it shouldn’t rely on the island’s rating, but maybe how long the weeds in the area have lasted. You can make a little fenced off area to make a farm of them.

speaking of villagers in new leaf selecting their housing spots, I have had 5 VILLAGERS PUTTING THEIR HOUSES IN PLACES DIRECTLY NEXT TO MY HOME AND INVADING MY FRUIT TREE AREA AT THE SAME TIME...

I remember purposefully leaving weeds so I could get the bad flower, I thought it was pretty.

Honestly loving all these new animal crossing videos, keep it up 👍🏽♥️

The random villager house placement was the one thing I didn't like about New Leaf.

something that really annoys me in acnh is how if you place items on the ground your ratings can go down, im doing a forest core island so i like to place acorns mushrooms ect on the floor but im not sure ill ever get 5 stars bc of it

Man I love your stuff! Keep it up

On the last part there... Having Cherry, Biskit, Coco, or Whitney leave my town would legitimately make me spiral. I don't think I could recover from that. ;-;

3:32 This didn’t happen unless you gave the go-ahead and you chose which store you wanted it to regress to

I think the only annoying thing about checking my island’s rating is finding out there’s too many items cluttered somewhere. Then I have to find out where that location is. I was absolutely ecstatic, however, when I checked my island rating a few days ago and found out I had a four star rating. This is the first time I checked my island rating in ages. I’m glad, however, that I’m not a fan of putting a bunch of furniture and trying to make an island theme of whatever. I’ve made a wedding area on one of my beaches and a couple Festivale themed areas, though, but that’s just about it when it comes to themes on my island.

11:31 If it's gonna randomly punish the player for playing the game with no explanation, the mechanic definitely should be thrown out. That, or it should be fixed to not do that and the rules should be specified so it doesn't happen anymore to anyone who reads the explanation. I don't know what's up with games being essentially turbo illiterate, they never explain their mechanics to a vital degree, they're always like "oh yea just make the city good and you'll get 5 stars" and then you never get 5 stars because the devs liked street lights so much they programmed it so a requirement was putting street lights everywhere or something equally nonsensical that punishes the player for not being an intercontinental telepath. Every game is like this, a lot of games would not suffer for explaining every mechanic with perfect detail, and most games would not suffer from explaining the mechanic enough for the player to not be punished, yet the most you get is a "oh just make the town pretty" or some equally vague description that LITERALLY MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE MENTIONED. Hylics made the same amount of sense and that game is pure brain jam for god's sake.

Just came across your channel and LOVE this content ^_^

when your 3DS runs completely out of battery, for some reason they decided to not include a persistent system clock on the motherboard, so it always resets back to 1/1/2000. If you played animal crossing WW this was fucking miserable because it got mad at you every single time.

My favorite villagers are 1.) the one who gave me my first friendship photo, Raddle, and 2.) the one who would always tell me if he was thinking about leaving and let me talk him into staying everytime, Rasher. No matter how long I was away for, no matter how many other villages had come and went, Rasher would always let me know ahead of time and would always let me convince him to stay. If I ever find Rasher in New Horizons he's going to get a special spot on the island just for him, he and Raddle are my best animal crossing pals even 3 games later.

EARLY GANG!! You're one of my favorite animal crossing KZfaqrs and I want you very often. Glad to see you!

I liked the Ruffelsia. I thought they looked cool. And as someone who was trying to catch every bug, i loved these. And I played City Folk only btw. I only had one in the town tho. I also never noticed the deterioration haha

11:43 I feel like the star rating is really important between getting thoughts of your island from your villagers, getting KK Slider, getting the lily of the valley and overall feeling pretty awesome because you got a 5 star rating. However, the getting demoted a star just because you moved an item even just by a bit is extremely stupid. I feel like the way your island is rated should be revised a bit. Maybe they fixed it by now but they definitely should fix it if they haven't yet.

Bro I took 2 years off new horizons coming back to those weeds wasn’t fun but coming back to my island was so emotional for me❤

I had a rafflesia near my house in new leaf at some point. I don't think my town had too much weeds or maybe it had a certain amount but I found it looked nice in the areas they were in. I was pretty grossed out when I saw it but at least I got flies for the museum

Me and my sister tried to gain a ton of bells from the ACWW time travelling exploit involving Interest. We did it wrong and got nothing. Our towns became FLOODED with weeds. We had to help each other clear our towns for like 5 hours

Villagers moving out in New Leaf was messy but manageable. As long as you talked to all your villagers every day, you could figure out if anyone was moving out, and then keep talking to that villager until they change their mind. The issue, as you mentioned in the video, is if you actually want them to move out. Basically every time you talk to them, regardless of what you tell them, there was a chance they change their mind and choose to stay anyway. So the trick there was to simply ignore the villager from the moment you learn they are planning to move, so you don't give them a chance to change their mind even by accident.

At the beginning of my New Horizons island, it was important to rank up my island to get the features, but now I just don't care.

Ah yes, my 3 favorite holidays. Christmas, Halloween and Mario. XD

I remember losing my old 5 star island, I still have the dream code, and it's the only way I can visit it anymore, I lost all the work due to having to completely format my switch...

In New leaf a villager put their house right in front of mine, and another one put theirs right in front of the town hall. It’s super annoying