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The airport being long and tedious makes sense, since going to the airport in real life is long and tedious. Maybe Nintendo just wanted to feel realistic.

The worst part of the update wait was you’d complain and then get dog-piled on by other fans about how Nintendo “can’t add EVERYTHING, you should be grateful you get anything at all!”as if Nintendo was a tiny studio rather than a BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY

Actually, all the tools have a set number of uses before they break...but fuck forbid Nintendo tell you how many uses it has before it breaks without having to check the game's code!

i wanna get back into it but then i remember all the slog to play and i just go "nope."

I came to Animal Crossing with New Horizons, so I don’t have the perspective of growing up with the games but I do take issue with the gameplay loop in New Horizons after playing for over 1000 hours. After a certain point, I felt no push to do my daily tasks or really anything other than continue building. The building outside is so tedious to the point of being frustrating, so even despite all the wonderful items and pathing it becomes difficult to decorate an entire island. Terraforming suffers from the same issue. When adding building features to a game, it is so important to include quality of life controls. There is no grid to turn on or off, so players have to manually count tiles by digging holes or placing items. There is no fill tool with terraforming, so you must take hours to fill in every single square. The controls on terraforming are awful as well, building and destroying really need separate buttons. There is no way to go into a full build mode like the one in the DLC, so the player must go through countless animations as well which all take time. I love building in the DLC because it is so easy and quick, so I can spend all my time on the small details, in contrast to the main game’s hours long commitment to making the base of a mountain before I even get to place any items. I’m not sure why they wanted the block by block placement through the character, but it really does get old fast and it demotivates me from coming back. The main point of the game really does come down to building, and so we lack extra content to fill out our days outside of collectibles. There are few truly random encounters, and those that do contain limited dialogue that repeats itself. There are very few mini-games, the villagers rarely offer me to play treasure hunt or any other random chance requests, and even worse I feel there is no significant change in their dialogue when we go from stranger to friend - which to me, is a baseline feature for any life sim. Ideally, the next game would have the building features from the New Horizons DLC combined with character focused gameplay and a larger variety of in game events and side quests. I have hopes that they have heard these commonly voiced critiques and they will ensure the next game has a much longer active lifetime than New Horizons.

Yeah I'm like one statue away from completing the art gallery and I'm not finding it. And yeah the flowers grow like crazy. I feel like I can't raise my island rating any higher than 3 stars because of it. I wasn't expecting to feel called out when you talked about keeping villagers on your island forever. I feel the burnout, though. I played Princess Peach Showtime almost a week ago and didn't even notice I wasn't playing New Horizons anymore.

me who’s been playing acnh for years without burnout or boredom 😊

The things that got to me; 1.) The Crafting 2.) The Villagers/The Stores 3.) The Saves 4.) Customization - I actually like the customization qol upgrades, but I feel like it's gone too far into it. If I want to be a complete decorator type I'm still missing entire furniture sets from past games and those interactive set pieces from frickin pocket camp. If I'm NOT up for designing, then there's nothing for me here. The Villagers, while cute, lack substance

I pre-ordered this game but dropped it after a month and sold it another month after that. I played New Leaf for legit 5 years, even had to restart my town after it was corrupted. New Horizons just didn't feel the same, and it had less content. I do kinda wish I didn't sell it though, probably could've enjoyed the updates.

Yo this video is super relatable buddy! I think that the reason I can't rejoin the Animal Crossing World is because 1. BURNOUT. I had played this game for literally 2 years straight rain or scorching heat, and apparently this was a sentiment shared with A LOT of people! The pandemic was some of the darkest years of my life and Animal Crossing was an AMAZING release for me! The way I kept going through 2 years was a checklist but eventually THAT STOPPED WORKING! Sadly put the game down like a week ago. Good video, Random!

Despite never having played Animal Crossing ever in my life, you've piqued the interest of the game designer part of my brain, and I've spent some time thinking of a way to make this game better just based off of this video. Here's my idea; Aside from speeding up crafting, adding visible durability meters, and streamlining various menus (all of which I'd file under QoL), maybe the villagers should have different opinions on how you design your island? For example, say you lay down a LOT of paths and cluster the buildings closer together. Villagers who prefer close knit, urban/suburban builds would approve and flock to your island, while those who prefer to be left alone in the wilderness would voice their disapproval and eventually leave (without you being able to stop them). Other villagers could have preferences for beach, ocean, river, fields, forests, the list goes on. Basically, retain the high level of customization, but allow the villager population to respond to that in real time. This would result in the villagers feeling more alive, the communities people build feeling more natural, and overall introducing some much-needed variety and challenge. In a way, this could also better incentivize visiting friends, as they would very likely have villagers you don't and vice-versa.

I'm actually with you on the last point, sure the customization sounds good on paper, but in practice it's just overwhelming (paradox of choice) and makes the whole island seem...disposable.

This is exactly how I feel, but I did not know how to articulate it. I appreciate everything ACNH did for me. It really lifted up my spirits during the pandemic and marked a very significant point in my life where I finally felt free in a strange sort of way. I just got to live with my friends and play video games all day as an adult. But it only took a few months to become this hollow feeling. The characters were dull and the content just… ran out. I thought maybe I had just grown up and the video games I used to love could no longer hook me, and that still may be true. But although NH had a lot of magic at the start, it did not have the same replayability that the older games had. I felt this way about New Leaf too. I would love to see them return to simulation over design again, but unfortunately that’s probably not what sells and I think this will be the future state of the IP until it inevitably dies.

I got completely burnt out and almost completely stopped playing after 2-3 years. I have also pretty much put down my switch 😪😢

A game like this has a poor replay value. (I mean "replay"). Once you finish the game to the last drop of juice, then watch for the hours played and think about that 200 or 500 hours played, was it a good time? if it is the you won a good reward from the game. Just don't try to return if you feel done. Now the game become a time capsule. (In deed I have a time capsule with Animal Crossing from Game Cube since 2001 to 2004, I pretend to bring my daughter to that town, I just need to hold for 5 more years for that for the time capsule to be ready.

I don't really like the villagers in New Horizons, simply because they just don't have any personality or character besides the ,,smug'' ,,sisterly'' etc, that is assigned to each of them. That's the reason why I hate Bob...In my eyes, he's just a clone of Zucker (who I really love since City folk uwu) that repeats the things Zucker already said :/ The most times, I only talk to villagers, if they talk to each other, to get a little bit more character from them. Hope they will make it better with the next Animal Crossing :')

The song from game cube that had cat meows mixed into it still lives in my head.

After my first instance of burn out I decided to reset my island which was immediately a mistake, I wish I still had my original one. Then I got a new switch and just forgot to transfer the island, so I had to start over again. The last time I played it I was playing jt religiously for about 2 or 3 weeks, and as soon as I got K.K. slider and the credits rolled, I dropped the game and haven't touched it since. It also doesn't help that to get all of the fun furniture and stuff the only quick way is nookazon or going to a treasure island and just taking whatever I want

Game cube animal crossing was such a core part of my childhood. Don't get me wrong i absolutely love this game, but yeah there is something about this one i don't go back to very often.

I just recently started playing mine again. I’ll go for months without playing and come back for a while. I still have one piece of art to get and a few bugs to finish the museum. I’m also still not sure I’m happy with my island… I see all these videos of beautiful islands and I want that, but I can’t seem to make it because there are certain things I won’t destroy that I love about what I have. I also have things so controlled on my island that I know where my fossils will be every day, they can only form in a few places. I also have my flowers under control as well (that wasn’t easy) using a lot of custom pathing. I’m still making some homes on the DLC, but I’ve made so many already that they’re only giving me jocks now or villagers with stupid ideas. No thanks… So I’m redoing older ones better since I’m better at making grand vacation homes. I’ve logged over 2500 hours on this game (sadly, that’s no joke) so I just can’t dump it. Plus my birthday is in 2 days and this will be my 4th year celebrating. Still hoping for my favorite, Punchy, to host my party 😊 Much as I love customizing my island, the houses, the fact that my villagers are trapped there unless I want them to leave… I do miss the way they used to talk as well. The verbal abuse was real! 😂 Plus they were sometimes insensitive. Once I hadn’t played City Folk in 2 years and when I played again, my next door neighbor (Kiki) was the first to see me and said, “I thought you died!” Nice… Thanks, Kiki… 😂 In New Leaf, Colton used to write me these letters that sounded like love letters, so I would write back in a similar way to see what would happen. The letters I’d get in return got even more mushy! Wtf?! 😂 But that’s not to say the villagers don’t get weird in this game. Mine say weird things a lot. I also have Wolfgang and every now and again he says really weird stuff 😂 Punchy was my favorite for weird things… I talked to him when we were next to a hammock, which was apparently a mistake because he started to question his existence: “This hammock looks like it belongs on an island resort. Wait… This is an island… Is this a resort? Am I living on a resort? Are you a resort employee? IS ANY OF THIS REAL?!” (insert distressed reaction for that last sentence) 🤣 That was one of those wtf moments with my villagers. There have been quite a lot of them! I think if you play as long as I have and talk to them as much as I do, they start getting these ideas on how to talk to you and say some real weird shit 😂

love your energy !!! glad i found your channel :) i relate to this video SOSO much LOL. im actually trying to get back into acnh rn with a fresh island-but i find myself already feeling bored ;-; i totally agree with all your points

I used to love New Horizons when it first came out (though not for the same reasons as everyone else), but over time, it just didn't have enough of an incentive or goal to see it through. New Horizons was able to hook me for so long because it started you out on an abandoned island, and you worked your way up to getting K.K. Slider to do a concert. I had lamented the lack of a Story Mode in the previous games, and I was glad this was here! ....Until the Story Mode finished. Then the terraforming took too long and was too tedious, and I'm also not very creative, so I was getting tired of a boring island with not much organization. Going forward, I hope there can be a spinoff of Animal Crossing that's actually good! Speaking of which, what were your thoughts on Amiibo Festival? Also, kudos to sticking with that insane editing! This must have been a real pain to make!

I feel the exact same way! I played it around the pandemic as well and after i got my ICH monitoring surgery along with getting my switch in june 2020. I played so much during 2020-2022 but i got so burnt out because i got done with my islands because i like building(does it make anyone else sleepy btw?) and collecting items and i had so much fun on Happy Home Paradise, but I also agree with you on your statement. I also agree with the tedium! Im replaying it again annd im frustrated too(Also the durability of tools!!)

I didn’t get the play the previous Animal Crossing games, so I can’t really speak on New Horizons as a continuation of the series, but I enjoy it for the most part. I got NH during the pandemic because it seemed relaxing and I liked the customization aspects to it. It was actually my first Switch game, too. I used to play it between my Zoom classes my senior year, and then before I started college work for the day, so it obviously has a big nostalgia factor for me. I think I have nearly 700 hours on the game now, if I’m not mistaken. But I for sure don’t play as often as I used to. Like you said, there’s just not much to do anymore. Once I completed the museum (sans the art gallery), it hit me just how little else there is other than maybe filling out the catalogs. There was a lot of potential for features they could have added, even if they didn’t want to do something particularly revolutionarily new to the series, which makes me even sadder that they stopped updates so soon. Additional mini games (and in increase in the existing ones), new dialogue, new events and quests, any of it would have been nice if they weren’t willing to give any kind of quality of life updates. But I guess for now I’m fine doing daily chores, decorating for the holidays and playing around in the DLC when I need something chill to do, until they’re ready to either come back to the game (wishful thinking) or release a new project altogether. I appreciate their effort, just wish they’d been willing to go even further - hopefully they will next time! Great video :)

Why-why are you lying it’s only been two years since it was released 🙂

What was telling for me when it first came out was there was no diving at the start. I remember when it was made available in NL. Everybody lost their minds in the community. On an island that would fit right in. To go along with that the tropical special fruit. Where are the lemons, mangos, persimmons, durians, and bananas??? Instead those were removed, but we still got the regular traditional fruit? Again we're on an island Nintendo. What gives?! Just a couple small things that showed how'd this game would in the future miss the mark

I agree so much with this video. I’ve been playing animal crossing since GameCube. New Leaf brought so much to the table, I was so excited to see what the next game would have. Not only did we have less in New Horizons, but the fact they brought some stuff back and pretended it was new felt insulting. And why remove some things like tropical fruits when the game takes place on a tropical island?! The game felt like a step back and sideways vs a step forward from NL. NH was a good island dollhouse sim, but not a very good animal crossing game.

So, this was my first Animal Crossing, so I don't have the nostalgia issues that you mentioned, but I can understand how feel. The biggest complaint I had/have is the tedious nature. When I catch a fish, I don't need to celebrate every time. When I catch a bug, I don't have to hold it up like baby Simba EVERY TIME!! And yeah, the crafting thing, as you mentioned, is fun, but it takes FOREVER!! It's funny, but so many of the complaints and issues with this game were resolved in other games like, Stardew Valley. I hope Nintendo takes a hint and follows suit. They shouldn't copy, but they should definitely analyze why the game has nearly infinite replayability.

Customization* - But removed Half the Fruit and over half the Gyroids that was in New Leaf.

This is the least productive comment but the "rev up them fryers" clip absolutely killed me

When I started it started playing late but loved it when I basically beaten it with kk i slowly became bored and stopped playing as much’once in a while I do play but I’m genuinely thinking just to put my. Switch away until paper Mario comes out

I bought this game way after the pandemic so I didn’t have that experience and I just felt like the whole point of it was to customize stuff… I felt like there wasn’t a direction for me to do in at all and that’s not what I was expecting from animal crossing.

In new leaf the axe breaks it takes a very long time but it does break eventually and I’m not sure about the golden axe in new leaf or the other tools.

From one Animal Crossing fan to another, thank you so much for this awesome and insightful video! I definitely agree with the majority of the points, and a select few I feel are double edged swords. I get where you're coming from on them, even if my experience was a bit different. Re: customization. I absolutely love the extreme jump in customization that they took, and I like that it makes this entry unique and its own way aside from just being the next in the series. But, as much as I loved it, and still do, I do see where you're coming from. It's not why I fell in love with the game either, and even though my route was different, I do feel that it can be too much of a good thing. It's kind of like TotK. It's epic, it's amazing, but it's not why I fell in love with Zelda. I still love it to death, I will still 100% it. I think that maybe I would have liked it even better if they had removed some customization limits but imposed others, if that makes any sense.

I only ever played new horizons but I’ve watched a lot of youtube videos about the other games too, so I totally understand where you’re coming from. I also really wish the villagers had more personality because they do get kinda boring, as well as other features from the older games. I still play new horizons, but I only got back into playing consistently very recently after not having played much for a few years. I really want to give the older games a try but unfortunately I only have a switch 😔

I have never played animal crossing. I'm actually playing dreamlight valley while watching this

To me, the mistakes of the the game reduce to being way less replayable, because despite of being a simulation game, villagers are not fun at all, they dont say anything interesting, dont ask for favors, dont do anyhing. And the crafting its cool bit in a way, has no rewards, same as cooking. There is no point of cooking anything. Also, some celebrations are way less fun, specially compared to new leaf. The only one that still feels like new leaf, is the turkey day. And christmas feels so shallow, in new leaf you had to talk to your villagers to know what they wanted, here, its just take whatever. Dude thats not fun

Same here I got the game right after it's release but a few months later I lost interest and deleted it off my Switch.

Or, you know, have the tools be a one-time craft and then have continued crafting for other items. 🙄 Thanks, Nintendo! (I too blame Breath of the Wild)

For me I wish they had that multiplayer island like what they had in new leaf, but maybe with more games? The multiplayer is really lacking in the game and super limited

I wish it was possible to mod nintendo consol games. A lot of the qualms we have with ACNH could be fixed with mods: a crafting mod, villager personality mod, dialogue box speed-up mod (for the airport etc), durability upgrade (longer durability and a meter to show when it's close to breaking)... It would be good for nintendo too if we could do this because it would encourage players to play more and for longer.

was the terraforming not completely new gameplay for animal crossing? We've never had a game where we can so easily decorate the world and not just interiors or generic placing of preselected limited things

I have like 8,000 hours in New Leaf but only about 400 hours in New Horizons. I just couldn't play it for too long. I binged New Leaf on it's release but I never really got too burnt out on it unlike New Horizons... I got REALLY overwhelmed with trying to decorate in NH that I couldn't ever finish. And when I did get into decorating, the game started to lag. I felt like after that I couldn't pick it up anymore. As you said it's more decoration over simulation and that's just not what I want from an AC game.

I started with ACNH, then downloaded New Leaf and Wild World so I could check them out and see what older players were talking about and... yeah, I get what you mean so much. Sure, the graphics are a huge downgrade, and some of the qol changes in new horizons really make the game less frustrating to play (like item stacking) but the other 2 towns, despite having very weird layouts and villager houses sometimes popping up in the most inconvenient places, just feel so much more alive. I hated my initial villagers at first since I had some... pretty bad starters, but I've grown to love most of them to the point I would feel sad if they moved out. (except you tabby get out of my town)

Wolfgang is also my favorite haha 🤍 he has been with me throughout all the games. I agree that sadly he's not as spicy as he used to be in new horizons 😔

I completely stopped playing that game due of harassment because people are harassing me for no reason so I immediately stopped playing that game all together & move on to a different game & never touch that game ever again

I specifically blame the animal crossing content creators for ruining this game for so many people. They would burn through all the content updates on streams and videos all for capitalistic gains, and then complain and demand updates so they can continue to leech. I really respect the content creators that are still playing for the community now bc it shows true love for the franchise. Those are the ones that get my like and subscription.

I honestly just felt overstimulated by this game. The crafting system and these things did not work in animal crossing for me. There was just too much stuff to do and it prevented me from being able to attain many things I actually wanted to. It also felt like it prohibited me from getting such items by the sheer amount of items and tiny shops. Not a horrible game but I have to say it wound up being my least favorite Animal Crossing by far. 1000s of hours on new leaf. I spent only 200 on NH. But I can still enjoy the GameCube game today.

you see, unlike you, i HATED my first cranky villager (hopper in wild world. bright red eyes like the devil he is). but hating him is what made it FUN yk? constantly harrassing him, hitting him with my net, saying "f you" everytime he made fun of me, cheering when he left just to have him replaced by ANOTHER cranky villager. even though i hated that guy, being hatable is what made the character interesting, made the game more fun, and got me emotionally involved with the character. ever since new leaf the villagers have just been so bland thats it hard for me to get attached to them, both positively and negatively. At least the other characters in new leaf who werent villagerswere interesting. That's probably why i didnt have much drive to continue new horizons, there was no emotional investment

Here's an off topic question: What *time* is it?

Yesssss

i kinda stopped playing after three years...

I have hundreds of hours in Wild World and New Leaf but New Horizons has my lowest play time out of any animal crossing game because its so boring and soul-less. Someone described it as a 'doll house' game; there's no real depth to it because it's just a decorating sim and the villagers are empty dolls to decorate with too. There's no heart and passion or feeling of community like the older games. Bad game design doesn't help either; tools constantly breaking, no ability to craft multiples of items, tedious dialogue and directions, etc. It often feels like nintendo is either way behind in game quality design or ahead but with no inbetween. I hope the next game is much better and returns to the quality of the older games but because New Horizons sold so well, there's a good chance Nintendo will think they can get way with this crap again.

Tbh, animal crossing is more fun as a child .... Over 20 it's not as fun anymore 😭

Thank. You.

Well 600 hours is good enough for a game, it doesn't need to be infinite

🧑🏽‍🎨 bro... You have an Insect Farm? Omg...poor things😢 if you not gonna keep playing, pls let them out

this video is a banger

Only 615 hours? Pshhh... I've got over 6000, bruh.

I have 1700 hours...

I have😂 1,657 h or more lmao

We did get other updates…you didnt mention Red and swimming. But as you said that was stuff the base game ahouldve had You can have several islands on one switch with mods. I have four so far though i dont visit them all regularly. Trouble is now its hard to get a moddable switch without hard mods. Mods can also remove the amiibo need though i cant get my emuiibo working again atm The missing characters can be invited to the Roost but yeah. Use clear paths to stop flower growth I love the customization and totally disagree with the last one. It was part of what drew me in.

i dont think every major npc had to come back. when old ones returned; still a bonus yay! but wasnt a huge loss if we still had features also, the gimmick of new horizons is to decorate your island, people always wanted to decorate better outside. now that we can, people bitch about customization?!

If you felt like that crafting really isn’t your thing , that’s ok but you can just leave that to me or to other people who are as Craftsman or Craftswomen. But if you just can’t wait for us to finish it for you , then maybe you could try making it for yourself. But if you don’t like it from Nintendo’s way of making it , then maybe you should not play in ACNH anymore and just wait for the next game of AC. But that way of crafting really is a whole lot of fun. But you really don’t need to be sooooo picky about this game.

Oh, you burned out. Ok, tl;dw

I completely stopped playing that game due of harassment because people are harassing me for no reason so I immediately stopped playing that game all together & move on to a different game & never touch that game ever again