A few months ago Gamers couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without hearing something about the New Nintendo Switch title, “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”. Celebrities played it, your friend was playing it, and reviewers well it seemed like they loved it. With a 91 metacritic score currently it feels like this game was everything everyone wanted from an animal crossing game. 



The game had updated visuals, crafting systems, an endless potential for events and happy home designer’s placement system, what couldn’t the game do? However, if one but looks next to the 91 score they will see that the user score is 5.2, much lower than what the critics say. Why were normal not critic people giving it far fewer marks? I, too, am one of these “normal people” with a itty bitty blog, but for what I’m worth I wish to look at the game now that the hype has dropped, though still present, for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This article is to show what I liked and what wasn’t actually that great. If you to have an opinion of the game please comment down below. But enough with formalities, lets get this after hype review started!

What I Liked

The island setting, improved HD visuals, and dollhouse like gameplay is wonderful. Initially I was really excited for the implementations of Happy Home designer for the rotating of objects inside your house, I was not disappointed in this mechanic. I also enjoy the randomization of the nook mile ticket islands that you can visit, and on that note the nook mile system is wonderful. As I feel my tasks I would do anyways actually reward me for something. The calm relaxing music that plays in the background as you fish, dig, catch bugs, and plant helps me relax and enjoy more of my actual real life. It makes me want to get outside and do some construction myself. I also enjoy the quirky fun humor of all the island’s inhabitants.

What I Disliked

Making Money in this game is harder than it was in New Leaf which makes getting every house upgrade and civil project a long endeavor. I understand this is a game to play slowly, but selling literally tons of fruit and anything I can take days if not real weeks to achieve. You have a loan of over 500,000 bells? You won’t be able to pay that off unless you play the turnip stalk market. There is no rare bug and fish island here as there was in New Leaf as well.

And as I said before I really did not like the crafting mechanic in this game, as I desired for tools that lasted forever, not only for a handful of times. I didn’t mind this idea in Breath of the Wild as I was always feeling the sense of adventure. But here in animal crossing it feels just another way for the game to slow you down.

As good as the hype was and is?

Though a great game, no, I don’t think the game has lived up to the hype. It’s a good animal crossing game for sure, but the repetitiveness that comes with crafting and breaking tools makes the game unnecessarily stretched. I would rather just be able to buy tools that never break, and buy items that are already made aka the in game store. Instead, I need to farm to get all the pieces to make an object, it may work for Minecraft but here I think it needs to go. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10 after spending a good amount of time with it. What do you all think?