I like the fact this thread's drifted into being another "NL vs NH" thread AGAIN, very fun.
I'm honestly attached to the GC game for reasons other than *adopts loud, obnoxious, nasal voice* "MEAN VILLAGERS, COULDN'T DO THAT NOWADAYS BECAUSE IT'S
NON-PC" or "NES GAMES" or whatever people seem to over-hype about the game in 2020. At this point, when they've steadily brought back most of the features they cut in WW (coincidentally, my first game!), I mainly love the atmosphere compared to the other games in the series. I love the big leafy things, and the koinobori, and the little buildings scattered around the massive coastal valley town. THAT'S what keeps me coming back to it, and if they could bring THAT to NH without any of the jank (such as the TERRIBLE storage system or the forced horrible hats) I'd be a very happy man.
However, I'm concerned as of late with the idea that there's supposedly two camps in Animal Crossing fandom (one of which thinks that it's a game entirely about talking to animals, and one of which is entirely about designing a village) and that over the course of time the priority's shifted from one to another... this is Doubutsu No Mori e+ erasure, for god's sake! As well as being, y'know, entirely wrong. I've always been somewhere between the two supposed camps, resetting for villagers, fruit and town layout, and wanting to be able to decorate my town with specific things, albeit not to the overdeveloped standard as popular NL/NH towns... whilst also enjoying communicating with the villagers and spending time chilling out amongst the animals.
While NH definitely has some problems with its villager system (the main ones in my eyes being a) WHY WASN'T THE VILLAGER VISIT SYSTEM READY ON DAY ONE INSTEAD OF BEING HIDDEN IN THE GAME PARTIALLY COMPLETE FOR 9 MONTHS, DEVS? b) there's a load of one-line dialogue that needs to be extended and c) the competition system from WW got taken out in LGTTC and still hasn't come back yet and d) the prioritisation of talking about stuff you've done recently or what you're wearing over the more interesting stuff) it's an exaggeration to say that NH's villagers are BAD by any stretch, because they're still fundamentally there to catch fish and bugs for, find their lost items, act as a go-between between villagers have them give you items and say funny things about themselves and to say "NL's dialogue was more varied" is just DELUSIONAL, as at least it's not talking about being as cool as a fair number of cucumbers most of the time (but I might be having the same problem as some NH players
)!
There's a load of other things I honestly hate about the game, some of which are shared with other AC fans (the update system meaning even minor things that should be in the game from day one like luck or the aforementioned villager visits aren't in the game 9 months in, inability to access your storage outside your home, meaning you can't store turnips; lack of certain furniture series from older games) and some of which is just stuff I'm getting annoyed at for no reason (bushes are in buds on the day they're meant to be blooming for the first time, instead of for an entire week before like in NL, minor events are relegated to Nook Shopping which means you can't get them in some cases til the day after the actual event, certain things no longer go out of stock which makes things feel a bit too easy to get, villagers move out too soon, you can't cancel it if you do it by accident, and they don't send you letters), and conversely there's a load of stuff I don't hate that other people do (bulk crafting's would be nice but it's not much of a necessity to me, Isabelle's morning announcements need some more dialogue added to mix things up a bit but they're honestly more characterful than just using her to tell you who's in the village, which IF YOU ACTUALLY TALKED TO YOUR VILLAGERS, THEY'D TELL YOU, and crafting from storage... which is basically over-simplifying things, like most of the things in that QOL video everybody goes goo-goo over. You wouldn't bake a cake without your ingredients, would you?)... but now that we're at the end of the "basic updates" stage once the next update happens, I'm looking forward to what's going to happen in 2021 and I'm GREATLY hoping that NH is much better once March 2022 comes along. Will they actually change how the holidays work from year to year, fixing one of AC's greatest problems that we didn't know it had? Will they add the city, putting all of the characters that're
actually beneficial to have in one place at one time (instead of putting most of them into one shopping area without actually adding new visitors, making your village seem too empty/like the only place that actually exists in the AC universe) together? Will they add crafting recipes for the upgraded Nook's Cranny tools so I don't have to stockpile the things? Hopefully.
The reality of game development is that it takes A Long Time, and in the case of Animal Crossing, that's especially true, especially an HD Animal Crossing game. Which is why Wild World happened, for god's sake! They had to simplify things from the various versions of the GC game that exist, so that people could communicate together online without having which in hindsight... kinda sucked? NH working with a GAAS model has some very obvious disadvantages, the main one being the AAAA WHY CAN'T I COVER MY HOME IN NINTENDO ITEMS, GRACIE WALLPAPER, AND EXOTIC CHESTS WHILE DRINKING A DELICIOUS BREWSTER COFFEE AND LISTENING TO THE GYROIDS IN MY 8X8 IN EVERY ROOM AND CUSTOM WINDOWED HOME NOW, DAMMIT... but the advantage is it also means there's always something to look forward to, and it means that maybe, just maybe, we'll finally get the Ultimate and Definitive AC Game that they've tried to make, but have ultimately failed because of time constraints.
Because on November 26th, after 18 years or so, they finally had villagers next to tables for the Harvest Festival again... and that's the kind of atmosphere I love to see in AC.
(Now bring back the Cherry Blossom Festival, not just as DIYs... an actual thing!)
