I don’t get it when people have ONLY popular villagers. I see how they could be attached to them, but it doesn’t really give your island it’s only depth or style, you know what I mean?
I like villagers across all of the different tier lists, and adopt them. I constructed my New Leaf towns and now my New Horizons island around themes and acquired villagers who both seemed best suited to the themes and whose character designs I personally liked. If I end up with a town full of high tiers, or full of low tiers, or a mixture of both or of all of them, it's a matter of happenstance. I don't give tier lists themselves any real consideration, I just like who I like.
I just have villagers I like. I wasn't aware of the tiers until I'd filled 9 of the spots, and they really don't tally with my own tastes in a lot of cases.
I had Marshal but he was far from my favourite - Shep is a much cooler smug villager, in my opinion. When my 3-year-old son went crazy about the idea of 'the red octopus' living on our island, it was Marshal that he was willing to kick out for Octavian, too!
As far as I'm concerned, all of my villagers are cool. The fact that Fauna seems more widely-appreciated than Joey, for example, really doesn't affect my enjoyment of them both.
I honestly ignore tier lists when looking for villagers, I think the only villager I have who could be considered high tier is Pietro and that's just a guess. Most of my favourites are pretty unpopular like Rasher, Marcel and Stinky but that makes me like them more because you don't see them about much. It seems like almost everyone has Marshall, Sherb or Raymond and it just makes it bit dull to see the same villager everywhere.
I personally don't care if they are popular or not popular. I just want the ones that I like the most.
Obviously they are also pretty popular but that's not the reason I want them.