Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review

by Finn, Grade 6

Wow. We had an “Exciting” start to the year. We’ve almost been at war, Australia is burning, and now we’re stuck in quarantine. In times like this, gaming is an escape and a good time killer. And through the ashes, we see in the distance 3 games. We see Doom: Eternal, Half Life: Alyx, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. And despite me getting it a week late, I still have some good hands-on time under my belt. SO, is Animal Crossing good? Is it bad? Let’s find out.

The Story

Despite a first glance, Animal Crossing does have some story to follow/ (And be warned, there are spoilers, so beware!) You start off in a plane going into an island with next to nothing on it, and with you are Tom Nook, Timmy and Tommy, and 2 villagers out of a pool of 300+ villagers. Once you land, you place a tent and prepare for an Island-Warming Party, and in this party, you choose your island name and get declared an island representative. Once you then go to sleep, you’ll talk to K.K, and then the story truly begins. I won’t go much deeper into it, but the story and short and sweet, with the end goal feeling rewarding. Not only that, but the game also isn’t constantly nudging you to keep on going with the story, so you can play it at your own pace.

The Graphics

The graphics are the best the series has been. Ever. The Animal Crossing team has somehow found a mix to keep the characters cartoony and also make them look realistic, nice, and up to par with graphics on other consoles. To me, I think they took a note from Yoshi’s Wooly World and Yoshi’s Crafted World, which are claimed to have some of the best graphics in any Nintendo game.

The Music/Sounds

The sound design is amazing. They managed to keep it realistic by also making it even calmer, even when you’re running away from wasps at top speed. And the music, with the soft guitar strums also mixes well with the sounds. Overall, it’s amazing. Look out “Lo-fi Beats to Study/Relax to” because there’s a new Animal Crossing in town.

The Gameplay

And now, the gameplay. The gameplay is simple, easy, and fun. You can run around the island, doing various tasks, like fishing and chopping down trees. With those materials, you can make new tools, give it to certain NPCs to complete goals, make furniture, or just sell it to Timmy and Tommy. The amount of ways you can customize your experience is mind blowing. Not only can you customize your gameplay, you can basically customize anything and everything. You can choose where villagers’ houses go, you can put furniture wherever and whenever you please, you can customize everything in your house. Just the fact that you have and can use these options are amazing. With the customization came a whole bunch of new features as well.

One of the standout ones are your NookPhone and Nook Miles. Your NookPhone has all of the apps you could possibly need, including apps like Nook Miles (More on that in a minute.), DIY Recipes (Also more on that in a minute), a very well made Camera, and much, much more. With your NookPhone also comes a secondary currency, Nook Miles. Alsong with the standard Bells, Nook Miles are a currency but unlike Bells, you don’t get them from selling, you get them from playing the game and doing tasks. You then trade in these miles to pay off one of your debts and get items to help you with quality of life, like Pocket Organization Guides, which finally unlocks more inventory space.

But that’s not all. Like I mentioned before, you can now make tools through DIY recipes, which are also used for furniture as well. This simple mechanic adds so much more depth into the game and since your tools will break (Yes, that’s also a feature) very often in the early game, you’re going to get used to DIY.

Now it’s time for multiplayer. The online is very good. I give it this regard because it actually works, unlike some of Nintendo's other online games. Despite a few glitches, it works fine. But, there’s also Couch Co-Op, which is one of my very few complaints. You see, in Couch Co-Op, the Leader of the party is the only one that’s able to gain resources, while other members can gather them, but they go straight to a recycling box. This makes doing other things together in Couch Co-Op very clunky, since if you want to somewhat enjoy it, you have to change leaders every 10 seconds. Not only that but you’re locked to one island per system. Not per account, per system. This was clearly an oversight, because some people want to share their system and game, but they still want to have a single-player experience, and this feature ruins those plans. It was good I knew 2 days in advance, otherwise it would’ve devastated my experience.

Despite all of this, Animal Crossing is a very good game, and we’ve especially needed it right now. The game is good looking, good sounding, and just good everything (Despite the terrible Couch Co-Op) Overall, if you have a Switch, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a must get.

Total Score: 9.9/10