Charts Genres Community
Charts Genres Community Settings
Login

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo
20 March 2020
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - cover art
Glitchwave rating
3.50 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
210 Ratings /
#995 All-time
#41 for 2020
Rate / catalog Rate / catalog another release
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Releases 9
Filter by: All 9 Switch 9
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
XNA 0 45496 59643 9 LA-H-ACBAA-USA
Show all 9 releases
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
RU 0 45496 42547 0 TRA-HAC-ACBAA-RURU
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
IT 0 45496 42546 3 LA-H-ACBAA-EUR
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
JP 4 902370 545319 LA-H-ACBAA-JPN
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
AU 9 318113 987097 LA-H-ACBAA-EUR
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
XEU GB 0 45496 42544 9 LA-H-ACBAA-EUR
2020 Nintendo  
Game card
CA
Write review
Title
Introduction
The Animal Crossing series defined my childhood. I easily spent thousands of hours across all of the games in the late '00s, playing with other players through Wi-Fi and even building social skills along the way.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf released towards the middle of my teenage years, and was mindblowing when it first released. Amazing game. But towards the end of my playthrough, I began seeing the villages people uploaded to the Dream Suite and decided to start making my own town into something beautiful and ambitious. Unfortunately trying to control how a village develops in New Leaf is an awful experience, so I burned out quickly; it simply wasn't meant to be pushed to its creative limits like that, and that's clear by how you had to do hours of soft-resetting or pattern manipulation just to control where villagers move into.

When New Horizons was revealed I was a little concerned about the deserted island setting making the player feel a little lonely, but overall I was excited about how much creative freedom it provided. Finally, outdoor furniture! Everything is within the player's control! I can build the town of my dreams! So when a friend on a server I'm in called the push towards a system where the player has control over everything a problem, I was a little confused as to why. They mentioned that they didn't want to feel like a god and wanted to feel a sense of community with their villagers, and I just... didn't get why they wouldn't want more creative freedom. Curious, eh?...

Approaching New Horizons
So what is this game? Animal Crossing: New Horizons is an amazing game for those who just want to escape into another world and build the island and character of your dreams. You can truly be anyone, and you can build anything. That's the core of this game.

The creative options are plentiful. There's a piece of furniture for almost any object you might want to use, and hundreds of clothing items to choose from. Fashion options aren't even limited by gender; something that more games these days need to embrace! Terrain modification and outdoor furniture also revolutionize the direction of the series, allowing every island to be truly transformed and turning the series towards a construction and creativity focused direction.

And as per usual for the series, New Horizons is a real-time game. This synergizes quite well with the new direction of the series, as creative players will log in every day to do their daily tasks and come up with new ideas to improve their island along the way. There will always be something to do, something to improve.

There's a few small nitpicks that I have. There's an arbitrary limitation of one island per Switch, so players who don't want to share their island with their family will find themselves disappointed. Furthermore, the hourly soundtrack doesn't begin playing until you complete the Town Hall, which may be weeks into your playthrough. The hourly soundtrack is the best part of Animal Crossing from a musical perspective, so it's a fairly baffling decision as I can't imagine that only hearing one overworld song for over a week makes for a good first impression.

Regardless, the game design of New Horizons is excellent. It's clear that Nintendo went into the development of this one with the goal of reexamining the purpose for every mechanic. And while many consider tool durability controversial— I'll share my thoughts on that in the following section— it certainly does a great job at getting players to engage with all of the game's systems by asking them to gather resources.

Caught Up in Appearances
But it's time for me to move away from the more objective assessments of New Horizons. Video games are interactive experience, and that makes them inherently subjective. So here's my experience: Frustration. Boredom. Disappointment. Yes, really. I've spent thousands of hours playing Animal Crossing and I couldn't fall in love with what's easily the most successful game of the series? Unfortunate.

The music is eh. It has a very cottagecore feel to it, which doesn't feel very appropriate for the island setting, and the melodies get older much faster than they did in earlier games. The setting DOES make me feel lonely like I anticipated, and I do wish that I could travel off to the city or main street to get a scope of how large the Animal Crossing world is like in previous games. But most importantly, playing this game feels like I'm constructing a dollhouse— one that never feels pretty enough to meet my own standards.

Everything in New Horizons exists for the sake of making it easier to construct things, giving players more options to construct things with, or collecting more critters to show off in a museum. Everything unnecessary, such as the cafe, was cut; and those cuts make the experience feel awfully hollow. And because I've got high standards, I spent dozens of hours doing tedious work that I found excruciatingly boring just for the sake of building a pretty island. And even after a few hundred hours, I'm still logging in and walking through my island just to be disappointed by how it looks. And I could keep working on it, but why would I keep wasting my time? Every building animation is slow as molasses. I just can't take it anymore. I can't even bring myself to care about series staples such as fishing and bug catching because I've always got to look at my disappointment of an island in the background while I do them.

And like I said, they cut a lot of fluff features; unfortunately, this included a lot of features which made the world feel more lived in. Now I could just return to monke and destroy everything I've built (which'll take over 10 hours because of how slow deconstructing is), then leave the island nigh untouched from how it looked when I first moved in. But what's left? Fishing and bug catching? Every other game in the series has that. They cut everything else. Ignore building, and then you realize you're left with less content than almost every other game in the series. As a result, booting up this game is just a constant loop of frustration for me, not the relaxing experience that I fell in love with the series for. Log in, feel frustrated by how your island looks, talk to your favorite villager, log off. Every time. And I know I'm not alone, as I've seen dozens of people share similar experiences over the months that I've spent in the Animal Crossing community. And most unfortunately, I regret having spent a few hundred hours painstakingly constructing an island that I'd never be satisfied with because "it'll all be worth it in the end!"... yeah, it wasn't. I really tried to like this game, though.

I could go on and on about this New Horizons— about the datamined content that this game desperately needs fully implemented, about the little details that I like and dislike, etc. But it's time to move on, as this review is already quite long.

It turns out that what I really loved about the Animal Crossing series was the escapism of it all, the peace that it brought, the sense of community that you'd feel with your villagers. Not feeling like a god. It turns out that my friend was right. And god, I wish they weren't.
Body
tips
Formatting
[b]text[/b] - bold
[i]text[/i] - italic
[s]strikethrough[/s] - strikethrough
[tt]text[/tt] - fixed-width type
[color red]text[/color] - colored text (full list)
[spoiler]text[/spoiler] - Text hidden with spoiler cover
[https://www.example.com/page/,Link to another site] - Link to another site

Linking
When you mention an album, artist, film, game, label, etc - it's recommended to link to the item the first time you mention it. Doing so will make it easier to search for your post and give it more visibility. To link an item, use the search box above, or find the shortcut that appears on the page that you want to link. You can customize the link name of shortcuts by using the format [Artist12345,Custom Name].
Paste the address (or embed code) below and click "embed".
Supported: YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Vimeo, Dailymotion
Embed
Raindrac 2022-08-17T16:36:42Z
2022-08-17T16:36:42Z
2.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Supplement
tips
Formatting
[b]text[/b] - bold
[i]text[/i] - italic
[s]strikethrough[/s] - strikethrough
[tt]text[/tt] - fixed-width type
[color red]text[/color] - colored text (full list)
[spoiler]text[/spoiler] - Text hidden with spoiler cover
[https://www.example.com/page/,Link to another site] - Link to another site

Linking
When you mention an album, artist, film, game, label, etc - it's recommended to link to the item the first time you mention it. Doing so will make it easier to search for your post and give it more visibility. To link an item, use the search box above, or find the shortcut that appears on the page that you want to link. You can customize the link name of shortcuts by using the format [Artist12345,Custom Name].
Paste the address (or embed code) below and click "embed".
Supported: YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Vimeo, Dailymotion
Embed
Attribution
Requested publishing level
Draft
Commentary
Review
draft
en
Expand review Hide

Catalog

albert_me Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-03-24T07:41:25Z
Switch
2024-03-24T07:41:25Z
7.75 /10
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
DaggerDraven Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-03-23T22:02:38Z
Switch
2024-03-23T22:02:38Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
feelinglikeido Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-03-16T01:02:52Z
Switch
2024-03-16T01:02:52Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Mountandrew Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-03-08T08:44:53Z
Switch
2024-03-08T08:44:53Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
SleepieShortie Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-02-19T21:20:15Z
Switch
2024-02-19T21:20:15Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
velvetun Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-02-17T21:38:03Z
Switch
2024-02-17T21:38:03Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
hunterskull1234 Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-02-08T11:31:22Z
Switch
2024-02-08T11:31:22Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
HydrangeaZ Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-02-06T03:52:53Z
Switch
2024-02-06T03:52:53Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
2DirtEater2 Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-02-03T01:19:31Z
Switch
2024-02-03T01:19:31Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
cardinaldiehard25 Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-01-22T21:20:11Z
Switch
2024-01-22T21:20:11Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
thm_yrk12 Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-01-19T19:17:33Z
Switch
2024-01-19T19:17:33Z
2.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
HAYDENWELCH Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2024-01-16T09:34:38Z
Switch
2024-01-16T09:34:38Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Player modes
1-8 players
Media
Download
Multiplayer options
Local, Online
Franchises

Comments

Rules for comments
  • Be respectful! All the community rules apply here.
  • Keep your comments focused on the game. Don't post randomness/off-topic comments. Jokes are fine, but don't post tactless/inappropriate ones.
  • Don't get in arguments with people here, or start long discussions. Use the boards for extended discussion.
  • Don't use this space to complain about the average rating, chart position, genre voting, others' reviews or ratings, or errors on the page.
  • Don't comment just to troll/provoke. Likewise, don't respond to trollish comments; just report them and ignore them.
  • Any spoilers should be placed in spoiler tags as such: [spoiler](spoiler goes here)[/spoiler]
Note: Unlike reviews, comments are considered temporary and may be deleted/purged without notice.
  • Previous comments (111) Loading...
  • Drawdler 2023-08-18 12:05:36.317996+00
    been playing since wild world and this is actually my fav, but new leaf and gc definitely have some stuff over it. ww was the peak of writing but that’s an anomaly, that game was mid otherwise
    reply
    • Drawdler 2023-08-18 12:06:05.40253+00
      also this game sucked before 2.0, they actively wanted to screw players over with the furniture variants
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • llwtrbl 2023-09-08 00:40:05.872819+00
    I'll never get over how they 1. released, and 2. stopped updating a bare bones game. With 7 years of work it should've been stellar.
    reply
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • eraslugaris 2023-09-24 13:37:50.990907+00
    very surprised by this rating. played it obsessively for a while but i got bored and never picked it up again. still it was fun while it lasted
    reply
    • eraslugaris 2023-09-24 13:37:58.383318+00
      new leaf >>>>>>
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • Knomss 2023-11-04 01:53:40.890327+00
    why is the rating so high but everyone hates it
    reply
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • catfishdeity 2023-12-16 15:35:29.698164+00
    i wanted this to be fun but this is boring. jumped ship for stardew.
    reply
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • ledbeatpink 2023-12-24 00:54:58.654282+00
    the pandemic nostalgia flows through me
    reply
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • anitahegerland 2024-01-05 07:49:35.837172+00
    Love this game, but where's the rest of it?
    reply
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • TheKarmaPoIice 2024-02-01 05:04:27.777067+00
    This was the right game at the right time
    reply
    • More replies New replies ) Loading...
  • More comments New comments (0) Loading...
Please login or sign up to comment.

Suggestions

Media

Contribute to this page

Contributors to this page: NickShutter IshmaelBlack
Examples
1980s-1996
23 mar 2015
8 apr - 12 may 2015
1998-05
Report
Download
Image 1 of 2