There are so many different types of Animal Crossing players, and yet Animal Crossing: New Horizons manages to improve upon the virtual lives of each player type that I can think of. For The Collector, there's a near-bottomless bounty of bugs, fish, and furniture to gather; for The Designer, there are new tools and few limits to what you can craft and customize. But it’s the The Artists, The Decorators, and The Dreamers who should be most excited: There's an entire island to jazz up, expanding the customizable area far beyond the walls of your house, which is all that previous Animal Crossing games allowed them to tinker with. Throw a swimming pool on the beach; add a giant kaiju statue to your garden; even literally move mountains. You can customize so much in New Horizons that it has me just as excited to see what people create as recent, lauded craft-'em-ups like Super Mario Maker 2 or Dreams.
Slow(er) Start
In order to deliver a blank slate for you to customize the crap out of, Nintendo made some questionable calls that lead to a very slow start to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Yes, Animal Crossing always starts out slow. But New Horizons is even slower: At the outset, two brave villagers and a very industrious raccoon family are the island's only residents. Cut off from any mainland, it's just you, trees, water, rocks, and slow accumulation of buildings and animal villagers over the course of several (real time) days. It's a different vibe than moving to a new town already full of bustling shops and animals going about their lives, and while building a town from scratch offers a lot of customization, it takes too long to get to the good stuff. And by “good stuff” I mean the basics: The museum, shopping, and even access to parts of the island which require tools like the pole and ladder to reach, all days away from when you first load up New Horizons on your Switch.
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Like past games, Animal Crossing: New Horizons uses your Nintendo system’s real clock, which means many game goals are locked behind a "sleep wall." Like the paywall found in some mobile games, which requires you to pay real money for resources to progress, in New Horizons you have to wait until the next actual day to see the bridge you built, or the store you upgraded, or the animal you invited to town come to fruition. There's just not enough to do for these first few days while the sleepy island is waking up. You can't scale cliffs or cross rivers until you satisfy requirements that span several real time days. To make it worse, resources deplete and reset daily, so outside of fishing and bug hunting you can't even effectively farm for bells while you wait. Unless, of course, you cheat it by changing that system clock. See below for my thoughts on that...
Custom Fit
One way or another, eventually you will have access to the tools to make your island whatever you want it to be, and that's where Animal Crossing: New Horizons really breaks from its predecessors -- and where it shines. The customizable island is a huge advancement. I love the terraforming tools above all else: you can form hills, cliffs, land bridges, waterfalls, lakes, miniature islands, and rivers with ease. You can flatten your entire island and raise a pyramid of waterfalls decorated in skulls, if you want that Bond villain vibe. You can also build bridges and ramps to make your island's far reaches easily accessible, and move any buildings you'd like, at any time.
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Finally, you can place the things you craft and buy anywhere outdoors as well, which represents another huge leap forward in fun customization. You can make a cool beach hangout, or a zen temple on a cliffside, just by dropping things on the ground. The total freedom to create a custom island has me more excited than anything else in New Horizons, and I eagerly await fan community tributes to Zelda, Mario, and other pop culture recreations, along with original designs.
I lost myself in island decoration (partially because the act of decorating your island, in turn, unlocks more tools) and began to neglect expanding and decorating my home. But the new home decorator is better than ever as well, with a brilliant new tool to easily place everything without having to handle it, a 360-degree view, and tons of cool, interactive things you can add to your house. Projectors and lamps that you can turn on, turntables and boomboxes to play music that you collect, and even animated wallpaper. The well of things to buy, find, and now, craft, is seemingly bottomless -- and may continue to expand, depending on what Nintendo's unannounced update plans turn out to be.
The Loop
A few days in I fell into a nostalgic pattern: The loop. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, my loop is a literal, counter-clockwise run around the island. I spot daily fossil digs, talk to animals, cast a line out to any suspicious fish shadows, hit the shops, talk to villagers, and joyfully juggle the tasks that inevitably pile up. These are chores, and in the field of making chores seem fun, Tom Sawyer has somehow found his match in Tom Nook.
[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=In%20making%20chores%20fun%2C%20Tom%20Sawyer%20has%20met%20his%20match%20in%20Tom%20Nook."] Nook Miles – which serve as both achievements and a currency – are an additional system added to New Horizons that became part of my daily routine. These are awarded for, among other things, hitting randomized daily achievements which range from hard (catching a specific type of fish three times) to dull (watering flowers). Miles can be exchanged for inventory upgrades (video gaming's greatest upgrade!), rare island decor, major landscaping tools, or tickets to the "nearby islands" (which I’ll discuss below). The miles are, like many other systems, another grind, but checking them did scratch the daily check-in itch I play Animal Crossing for. So yes, I'll water the darn flowers.
Craft-'Em-Up
Crafting offers a major change to furniture, clothing, and tool acquisition in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Although you’re now allowed to customize many basic designs, it has a very grindy downside: Because every game has to be Minecraft now, the root of crafting in New Horizons is hitting trees and rocks to see what falls out. This is a slow process, made slower by your tools that you've recently crafted breaking down and thus perpetuating the crafting cycle.
It's more busywork than fun, and there are no shortcuts: You whack a stone four times and then you pick up each rock. One. At. A. Time. And while you can fortify your tools to be more durable, I've crafted 15 or so fortified fishing rods at this point, each after the last broke at a really inopportune time. (Pro tip: You can carry your crafting bench with you at all times to make a spare tool in a pinch. No need to leave it at home.) Rather than deal with the crafting hassle, I preferred plopping down bells for weird, Nintendo-designed furniture sets and even weirder clothes in pre-made forms from shops.
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What's The Story?
Animal Crossing fans probably didn't expect to be reading about a plot in this review, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons not only has one, but it’s appropriately cute and I loved it. Previous games in the series have you moving to a new town and paying off your bills -- that's about it. But in New Horizons, there's an additional motivation to customize your island, recruit new animal residents, and work towards a better "island eval" rating; a five-star system that takes outdoor furniture, bridges, ramps, residents, flowers, and much more into account. The details of this motivation constitute a big spoiler, which I'll of course spare you.
Critter Country
Eventually, your town will be bustling with animal residents -- up to 10 can move in to housing plots you can freely place and move.
