I love Animal Crossing and I concur that faux-RPG mechanics would not make for a much better Animal Crossing, but in many ways New Horizons felt just like step back from New Leaf. The decoration systems are Animal Crossing Bells improved but the furniture variety is lacking, so that it felt much harder to make something that felt like it's represented me. I have seen plenty of very creative layouts, but I have also seen a ton of basically the specific same bedroom or kitchen or living room. It will not help that they destroyed the customization options of NL by creating just like half the things not able to be customized, forcing you to wait forever or try and trade for the ideal color box couch.

Being able to personalize your island is extremely trendy, but the real time aspect means my island felt half baked. I'd begin to execute a notion, spend two weeks moving buildings, then realize that I do not like the result. I guess I need to concentrate on the advantages of the island reshaping, but this was definitely something that left me feeling bummed.

The crafting system is cool, however the lack of infinite durability tools has basically made me not want to get the game again. I see no reason why golden tools need to break. Or any tools will need to break. Can it be only a mild inconvenience to make/buy brand new tools? Sure. But it adds almost zero benefits to this game. In Breath of the Wild, your firearms burst. Some found this bothersome, I really liked it. Why? And I had many weapons at once and collected them so switching to a new weapon wasn't a job. At New Horizons, switching to a different fishing rod after yours breaks changes nothing about the gameplay. Each rod is just like the past, there is no importance to any fishing rod. Unless you're actively timing your usage to coincide with excursions to sell your fish then you are going to need to waste time running to a shop or crafting seat. It is a badly designed system that directly up ruined fishing and bug catching.

Speaking of bug catching, Nintendo chose to destroy that too. Outside of grabbing beetles on the island at New Leaf, insect catching has ever been terrible for making money. It was so much easier to catch fish. When New Horizons came out, insect catching really got you decent money. Several bugs with solid spawn rates were really worth good money. I had been enjoying making 300k or so one hour by knowingly catching bugs. Given the prices of the large ticket items at the store, that appeared about fair, and was pretty equivalent to fishing. Then Nintendo nerfed the spawn levels of these good bugs for apparently no reason. They also cracked down to the interest you have for having bells in the bank. It seemed just like Nintendo thought it was too simple to earn money, but they dismissed the largest moneymaker, the Stalk Market. In previous matches, the Stalk Market was an actual gamble. Seeing other cities was a really involved process, so you're basically relying on your own prices. With the rise of social networking and the comparative simplicity of visiting different islands (a process that's still dogshit awful, Nintendo never ceases to amaze with their internet ineptitude) it became commonplace to locate a good turnip cost each week not to merely double, but triple or quadruple your investment. And with the greater inventory, purchasing a large number of turnips was insignificant. So people could easily create millions of cheap Animal Crossing New Horizons Items bells with little effort and almost zero risk.