Animal Crossing New Horizons Review

I’ll be honest with you all, Animal Crossing New Horizons is my first entry in the Animal Crossing franchise. A franchise which has spanned every Nintendo console since the Game Cube. So I came into this game without much knowledge at all of the prior games, save for a general idea. So this review will be mostly from the perspective of a newcomer.

That being said, I did play a lot with someone who is a series veteran, who did offer some insight from her perspective. But mostly, this is my own thoughts on Animal Crossing New Horizons.

The Getaway Package

In terms of story, New Horizons is very simple. You’ve been invited to a deserted island by Nook Inc., who are offering you a complete getaway package. You get your own tent on the island, as well as two neighbors to interact with. Though most of your time will be spent building up your island infrastructure.

The game is mostly about populating your new island and making an actual town from it. As you continue building houses, getting a shop set up, and getting more people on your island, you grow your community. Which is when the game truly opens up with all its quirky characters and huge variety of clothing, furniture and decorations.

The Animal Crossing series has always been a life sim at heart, and New Horizons to me feels the most like a life sim. It’s all about your life on this deserted island and what you make of it. So let’s talk about the various things you can do on your new island.

The Goal of Animal Crossing New Horizons

The main goal in the game, as in earlier games, is to earn bells so you can pay off your loans to Tom Nook. While in earlier games this gave Nook a somewhat bad reputation, I never felt it was unfair or exploitative in New Horizons. On the contrary, it feels more like you’re just repaying Nook for helping you expand your island and your house.

According to most other series fans I’ve talked to, Tom Nook is a lot more likable in New Horizons. And he even has two adopted kids, Timmy and Tommy, who help him out with running his shop and carrying out tasks. They are insanely adorable as well.

As has been tradition since the first game, the game progresses in real-time and is synced with your system clock. This means days and seasons pass by in sync with your actual time, lending a high degree of realism to the game’s simulation. As well as acting largely as a secondary world for you to explore, as things in the game will happen regardless if you play it or not, since events and behavior is tied largely to time.

That’s not to say you have no impact on the game. Largely the overall progression of the game is still up to you and there is no deadline on the loans you get. You can largely take as much time as you need with things, giving the game a very high degree of freedom in regards to how you want to play it. But it obviously rewards you for completing the goals it gives you.

Time Traveling And Turnips

Since the game’s time is tied to your system clock, that also means time traveling is a thing. By setting your system clock to a different time, you can alter the in-game events. This is a bit controversial since it can be used to exploit certain things. And while some people will defend it, a large number of people are against it.

Regardless of what side you’re on, the game does in its own way kind of discourage the practice. Weed will grow on your island unless you tend to it. And there’s, of course, the turnips and the stalk market.

Every Sunday morning, Daisy Mae will swing by your island selling turnips. And despite her somewhat gross appearance (for God’s sake wipe your nose), buying turnips is one of the easiest ways to make money in the game.

Now here’s where the game really discourages time traveling if you wanna get into this aspect. Because the turnips will rot after a week. And every day, except Sundays, Timmy and Tommy will buy turnips from you. But the prices change every morning and afternoon.

Turnip prices change every Sunday as well, so it’s important to remember how much you paid for each turnip. As long as you’re not selling them at a loss you should be good. But some have reported really high prices for them. So this is a game that really rewards playing the game as intended.

Activities

Animal Crossing New Horizons is all about earning money, so there are thankfully a lot of ways to do so. The game encourages you to take part in as many activities as you can. So let’s take a look at them.

Gathering Fruit

Every island has its own fruit. You can sell it, though your native fruit will always be less worth on your island than other fruits. This gives incentive to visit other people’s islands through multiplayer, where your fruit isn’t the native fruit. Since that means you can sell it for a much higher price.

You can also bring fruit from other islands you visit to your own and plant it there. That way you don’t have to rely on visiting other islands to sell fruit that isn’t native. While the game doesn’t actively encourage this, it’s still a legit strategy to earn money from gathering fruit.

You can of course also eat the fruit. Eating fruit gives you added boosts, allowing you to move entire fruit trees if you so desire.

Planting Flowers

You can also cultivate a garden if you so please. Flowers grow all over the island and you can use the shovel to take them with you. But you can also buy seeds from Nook’s Cranny, or even get flowers from other people’s islands.

Flowers can be sold or used to make decorative items. And planting flowers and watering them every day gives a chance for them to crossbreed, creating even rarer breeds of the same flower. Some crafting recipes require crossbred flowers, so a big garden can be a worthy addition to your town.

Fishing

Given you’re on an island, there’s definitely a lot of fish around to catch. Different fish appear in different places as well, as some will appear on the beach, and some only in ponds.

Fishing is very easy to do in the game. All you need is a fishing rod and you’re good to go. You throw out the tackle in front of a fish in the water and wait for it to bite. When you hear a certain sound, you have to be quick to reel it in before it escapes.

If no fish is around you can use fish bait to make them appear. This can be useful during the Fishing Tourney where you have 3 minutes to catch 3 fish or more and get bonuses if you catch more than 3 fish.

Fish can be sold to Nook’s Cranny. Though CJ, a fisherman, will occasionally visit your island and give you fishing challenges. He will also buy fish for considerably more than the Cranny.

Crafting

Crafting is pretty easy in Animal Crossing as well. You can either use the crafting workstation in Tom Nook’s tent (the Residential Building later on) or make your own crafting table. Either way, you need a certain amount of ingredients to craft things, and you receive recipes through various means.

Ingredients are typically gathered from your environment using various tools. Typically most of the recipes use different types of wood which you get from trees. As well as iron and stone which you get from the various rocks laying around the island.

Crafting can be useful for earning money since Nook’s Cranny will have a hot item for each day that will sell for more than the usual price that day. So if you are so inclined, you can earn a lot of money selling a lot of that item.

Bugs and Fossils

You can also use a net to catch bugs. Bugs and fish can both be donated to the museum. At first, you can only donate them to Tom Nook but as the curator Blathers arrives on the island, you can donate them directly to him. Bugs can also be sold, and the NPC Flick will even pay extra for them.

Another thing to donate to the museum are fossils. These can be dug up with your shovel from certain spots. You will need Blathers to assess them before you can donate them though. If he already has a fossil you can sell it, usually for a pretty good chunk of bells.

Nook Miles

There is another currency in the game called Nook Miles. This has more limited use but the good thing about it is that you earn it by simply playing the game. Doing various tasks in the game will reward you with Nook Miles. Though as the game progresses the rewards will become more sparse.

Nook Miles can be spent in the Residential Tent/Building on the ADB machine to buy various recipes and stuff to decorate your island with and upgrade your Nook Phone and other things. You can also spend them on buying Nook Miles Tickets, which lets you visit other islands.

Fashion And Furniture

Shopping is a huge part of the Animal Crossing experience. Your bells are not just for paying off debt, but also for buying clothes and furniture. Furniture items are typically sold at Nook’s Cranny, while you can get clothes when the Able Sisters move to your island.

You can also design your own clothes using the Custom Design app on your Nook phone, which can be upgraded to do even more intricate designs. I’ve had a lot of fun with this app and your designs can be shared with people online as well by using the kiosk in the Able Sisters’ store.

As you upgrade your house, you will no doubt need more and more furniture, and go for a certain style. This is the kind of game where half the fun is just seeing what’s for sale, and trying to make your home as nice as possible. It makes it very fun to play the game on a daily basis just to see what’s for sale.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is a huge part of Animal Crossing. There is a huge community around this game, especially on Twitter where people share screenshots of their homes, design codes and so on. And what’s even better is that you can visit your friends easily in this game.

If you add your friend in the game, you can use the Dodo Airlines to visit them. You can also use Dodo codes to visit people you haven’t friended yet. Visiting other people’s islands allows you to see what they have for sale, as well as sell your fruits and turnips on their islands if they sell for more there.

You can also send letters to your friends, which is also a way of sending items to them without visiting them. Using the mail stand at the Dodo airport you can choose a letter design, write a message and attach an item of your choice.

Issues

As fun as Animal Crossing New Horizons is as a game, there are some issues I have with the game. For the most part these issues aren’t bad enough to make me not want to play the game, but they are still something to be aware of.

For instance, whenever you have visitors on your island, there are a lot of restrictions in place. Some make sense, others not so much.

Multiplayer Limitations

You cannot use the Custom Design app on your phone while having visitors over at all. Which I feel is a bit weird, since you’d just be staring at your phone and such. I can understand not allowing you to use any of the designs but not allowing you to use the app at all seems a bit too strict.

It also seems you cannot gift customized items to your friends, which in my opinion kinda ruins the fun of doing that. You can’t even travel to their island and drop it there, the game will just stop you from doing that. At least you CAN share your design with them so they can use it themselves.

Control Issues

I also struggle a fair bit with the controls. Mostly in regards to targeting. The game does not actually show you where you’re going to hit something, so you kinda have to guess based on your position. But since you’re not locked into any direction either, the game kinda “forces” you to a certain spot on the invisible grid.

This can be really annoying in situations where you need precise aiming. Such as when using the shovel or fishing rod. It just seems a lot of the time I just aren’t able to actually hit the spot I’m aiming at. A targeting system would’ve been nice.

I also wish the game would let you move the camera around more. I understand this is just a limitation because of the style of the game. But it would be nice as a lot of the time stuff can be obscured from the default perspective.

The game was review bombed because the game only allows you one save file. But personally I have no issues with this. It’s not the kind of game where it makes sense to have multiple save files. And while this would be nice, I don’t see how it ruins the game in any way.

Visuals

Visually Animal Crossing New Horizons looks simple on the surface. It has a very distinct style to it, which is kinda cutesy and cartoony. But when you look closer the game has a lot of really nice lighting effects. Different materials will give different light reflections, and items in the game such as lamps will illuminate the surrounding in a very believable way.

To put it bluntly, New Horizons is one of the most gorgeous games I’ve seen on the Switch. Especially during the evening and night time where the sunset casts the island in a really nice ambient light. And during night time the stars in the sky become a beautiful thing to look at.

New Horizons oozes atmosphere and it’s the kind of game you can just get lost in. It also helps the amount of clothing items and furniture allows you to customize your surroundings entirely to your liking.

You can even completely redesign the island once you unlock the terraforming tools. So eventually you gain a high degree of freedom in choosing how you want your island to look.

Sound and Music

The music is pretty pleasant and I even found myself humming it outside New Horizons. The music also changes between each hour once you get your Residential Building set up, which is a nice touch. You can also collect various pieces of music in the game from the artist K.K. Slider, all in different genres. These can be played on your personal hi-fi or music devices.

Sound-wise the game is pretty good as well. There’s a lot of atmospheric sounds such as wind and the waves of the sea. The characters in the game all speak in a made-up language called Animalese, which sounds like a mix of Japanese and English. I was expecting it to get annoying but it surprisingly grew on me as I played.

Summary

Overall, Animal Crossing New Horizons is one of the nicest games I’ve played. It’s the kind of game that just gives you a good feeling like you’re part of a community, both in-game and in real life.

Everyone has their favorite villagers they have crushes on or their favorite ways of playing it. And it’s been a lot of fun seeing what styles and home styles people have come up with. So rest assured, New Horizons has something for everyone.

So if you needed another reason to pick up a Nintendo Switch, Animal Crossing New Horizons is a very good reason. That is if you’re into this sort of game, as it may not be for everyone.

It’s not the sort of game you can expect to “finish” in one sitting, as the game doesn’t really have a finished state. It’s a slow burn kind of game, and with a fair degree of grinding. But if you’re the kind of person who enjoys this kind of game, you’ll love it.

Shoutout to Kira Lorefield for helping out with screenshots.