As long as you are content to either play single player, with people you know locally or online, or people here on the forums, I'd also give a definite yes. The reason I specify these parameters is because, as mentioned in
this thread, New Leaf, as well as some other 3DS games, have fallen prey to hackers. If you stick to yourself or people you know personally you won't have to worry about such things. These people are found on the worldwide version of Club Tortimer. There's an option to go to Tortimer Island on your own or with a friend, that's what you'd want to stick to using.
There are some things that New Horizons does better, such as: allowing you to choose different skin colors for your player characters, terraforming, allowing you to destroy any rock on your island if you don't like the placement of it, and letting you edit the homes of your animal residents if you so choose.
In every other way, however, I prefer New Leaf over New Horizons.
- As someone who primarily plays Animal Crossing games for the interior design aspect, New Leaf is way better when it comes to player homes. The rooms of player character homes, when fully expanded, are way more spacious and allow for more creativity. The awkward layouts of the rooms in New Horizons has, on more than one occasion, sabotaged design ideas I had because I just couldn't fit it all. Not a problem I ever encountered in New Leaf. I'm frankly jealous that the animals can have 10x10 rooms in the Happy Home Paradise DLC of New Horizons since the player home rooms are too cramped.
- Speaking of player character homes, there are way more options to customize the exterior of your house in New Leaf.
- There are a bunch of special NPC characters who, up until New Horizons, were either mainstays of the series or introduced in New Leaf but who weren't included in New Horizons.
- As opposed to the deserted island that you build up in New Horizons, New Leaf is a bustling town where, over time, you unlock numerous shops and it makes the place feel more lived in.
- While Nook's Cranny just stops growing after one expansion in New Horizons, the Nook shop expands multiple times in New Leaf (and the previous games) as you buy and sell things.
- Related to the above point, Gracie and her furniture sets and clothing are great!
- There are a bunch of other furniture sets that were mainstays of the series as well that were cut from New Horizons. New Horizons went for a pretty big overhaul and there are mixed opinions about that in the community, or at least there were in the past.
- You can have Cyrus customize some of the furniture with ores you harvest from rocks. He can also take complete sets of fossils and make miniatures of them.
- Perfect Fruit looks neat. Don't sell the first one (it looks different from the others, you'll be able to tell visually if you pay attention), plant it and grow another perfect fruit tree, and then more if you want. They sell for more bells.
- There are more varieties of fruit that you can grow that weren't included in New Horizons.
- There's a tree that grows as you spend more time playing the game. It grows alongside your town. Very satisfying!
- The Bug-Off and Fishing Tourney are actual competitions instead of just catching however many you can in a few minutes.
- Golden Tools don't break like they do in New Horizons. Silver and Gold tools in these older games are meant as rewards for your efforts from earning them. The Gold Fishing Rod and Gold Net make fishing and bug catching easier. The Silver Axe does break but it has an increased chance to leave special marks on some of the stumps when you cut down trees. The Silver and Gold Slingshots shoot 2 or 3 pellets respectively instead of the standard 1. The Silver Watering Can lets you water more flowers than a normal Watering Can, and a Golden Watering Can allows you to water even more flowers than that as well as to turn wilted roses into gold roses. The Silver Shovel increases the ores you can get from smacking rocks and the Gold Shovel allows you to grow money trees.
- Tortimer Island actually gives you things to do with friends. You can go catch beetles and sharks, regardless of the time of year in your town, that are worth a lot of bells. There are also actually minigames, called tours, that you can play either on your own or with a friend. I don't know why they decided not to include those tours, or anything similar, in New Horizons when they were using New Horizons to push online features and encourage people to pay for Nintendo Switch Online.
There's more I can say, but I think that list should suffice as it's pretty long and substantial already. I hope you enjoy the game if you do pick it up!
