So almost 3 months from release, how do you feel about the game?

[Coach]

I like it alot, but it's lost some of the charm that kept me coming back to WW and NL. I don't find myself logging on just because I want to have fun, but rather because I want to run the daily errands, check who the visitor is ect. The special visitors (2 a week) are the main reason I try and check every weekday and also explain why I can rarely be bothered to play on Saturday or Sunday.

As others have said, an update would be able to reignite some of my passion! I expect we'll hear news near to the end of the month so there's something to do shortly after the wedding season event.

 

[Nami]

I love the game, so much. That said, there needs to be some updates. We are sorely lacking items. New leaf came out as a completed game with so much more to it, it's kind of silly that we have to wait for updates on those. Seasonal items I understand, but a lot of the core sets? Yikes.

I also miss diving, and the cafe. Both of which I'm sure we will see as updates, but it's a pain to not have those additional activities now.

Color locked items should never have happened.

Overall I'm having a ton of fun with it still, but it's got a lot of room to be even better.

 

[Imbri]

I love it. The fact that it reminds me so much of ACGC, rather than a ported version of NL, is a large part of the appeal to me. I enjoyed NL, but it couldn't hold a candle to ACGC. NH has all the fun things from ACGC that I loved plus the decorating abilities from HHD. Yes, there are things that could be added, but I think Nintendo is planning on doing a rolling update to keep things going, and I'm okay with that. There was so much to do with getting houses/buildings situated, terraforming, and gathering items that it's kept me busy enough. I honestly see myself playing this for years to come.

 

[That Marshal Fangirl]

I do enjoy New Horizons. However, I agree with what other people have said in that it feels incomplete in terms of furniture. Terraforming is a cool feature, but I have the creativity of a dead gnat and see it as more of a nuisance than anything else. That's probably just a personal problem, though. Another major update would definitely make the game more interesting.

 

[Splinter]

Ready for updates.

 

[SpiritofAce]

I just came here to add that if you've got over 400 hours in a game that has been out for around 3 months, it's easier to see why you're getting burned out. Maybe just have a break for a few weeks until the next update, then you might feel better about it? You can't expect to keep playing for 5+ hours a day every single day and not experience some sort of fatigue.

 

[InstantNoodles]

I feel pretty let down by the events so far, and I feel burnt out as I've logged 600 hours so it's totally my fault. Really looking forward to the Pokemon DLC as it'll grab my attention for a bit and maybe when I come back to ACNH I'll feel refreshed.

 

[stiney]

It's my least favorite in the series as the items are very ugly (most of them) and very limited for an AC game, and a switch game at that.

NL had nearly 3000 more items and not just color variations.

It has amazing potential though.

At launch, New Leaf had about 360 more furniture items, and that's counting the color variations in NH as one item. (NL had 1,271 furniture items, plus the 20 fossil models. Welcome Amiibo added an additional 493 furniture items. NH has 1,069 unique furniture items, some of which were PWPs in NL, and that number does include the bug and fish models, bringing the number to an estimated 360 item difference). This is also comparing a game that had all holiday furniture in the game at launch, vs one where we know items are added in patches; the Bunny Day items weren't in the game at launch, but were added in the first patch. It's reasonable to assume that this will be the case with future holiday furniture as well.

NH has 131 rugs + 171 flooring. NL launched with 119 types of flooring, WA added 42, and had no rugs. (The breakdown in NH could be off by a couple, if I miscounted. There was no easy way in VillagerDB to sort them, but regardless, NH has more flooring and a new category of flooring absent in NL.)

At launch, New Leaf had 125 types of wallpaper. Welcome Amiibo added 26. New Horizons has 247 wallpaper options. NH has 96 more types of wallpaper than NL did *after* WA came out.

I did not compare clothing, as the revamp of clothing makes it difficult to compare apples to apples. Now there is one camo tee in seven colors that is cataloged as one item. In NL, there was an arctic camo tee, a jungle camo tee, and a desert camo tee, three unique catalog items.

I don't know where you're getting this number of NL having 3000 more items.

 

[Soigne]

i've always loved this series, so it's hard for me to not enjoy it entirely. that being said, i would absolutely place this beneath new leaf and possibly even beneath city folk & wild world. maybe that's just because i grew up with those games, but i was never too enthusiastic about the whole deserted island scheme they took with this game.

plus, the lack of content right out of the gate is disheartening. tHeY'rE gOiNg To UpDaTe ThE gAmE - yeah, i know. it still doesn't change the fact that this sucks. with games that rely on constant updates, sure there's a small resurgence in interest for the game, but that interest quickly dies for most players. i'd rather have had everything up front like every other ac installment.

 

[EmperorGandhi]

Got it at launch, have nearly 300 hours on it, and still love it. I think New Leaf's strengths lie in the smaller things (the ordinances, minigames, activities with your villagers like having them come over to your house), while New Horizons has a lot of bigger changes that make it great (terraforming, the Nook Miles system, placing stuff outside), if you want to make the comparison between the two games.

While there are some criticisms I can get behind like the lack of furniture sets, the fairly underwhelming events, and most of the QoL stuff, New Horizons is still easily the best in the series since it does so, so much right. Because we've pretty much all been cooped up inside for the past 3 months, people have had so much time to play and that's likely where all of this burnout is coming from.

 

[lulu9956]

I definitely think there are things that are missing, and I hope the game continues to improve with time.
That being said, I've played it every day since release and often still play a few hours every day (yay quarantine!)

 

[DJStarstryker]

I still play pretty much daily (have only missed 1 day!). NH is my favorite of the series so far. I really enjoy the customization part of AC, and NH lets you do a lot more than any game previous to it.

NH is certainly not perfect by any means. There's quality of life aspects that Nintendo needs to improve, some that have been around since the very first AC game. I'm satisfied with clothing, but there is a lack of furniture problem that the updates are not helping fast enough with. But I'm still having fun with it.

 

[stiney]

This is my second AC game, with the first being NL. I started NL in 2018, so I'm comparing playing two games as an adult in my mid-30s, which is likely coloring my responses (just as those who played one or more of the games as kids are having their responses colored by that).

I like NH better overall. Much of what people miss about NL is stuff I actively disliked (diving, the mini games) or was indifferent to (Katrina, the pelicans, they didn't have much story in NL and just were sorta there? And having Pete walk around was annoying because it meant no special visitor I actually wanted like Redd or Gulliver). There were a lot of quality of life upgrades to NH--bigger pockets, auto-stacking items, the inventory system overall (though yes, I miss accessing storage from outside the house), using closets to change is awesome. Getting random islands instead of the same island all the time is also awesome (and no Kapp'n is a plus in my book). There were some QoL downgrades--yes I'm looking at you, postcards--but overall there were more upgrades than downgrades IMO.

I do think that there is a sense that more furniture is missing from the game than is actually missing. But I do miss some of the wackier furniture items. Sure we still get the soft-serve lamp, but in NL I had a witch character who had a Hansel & Gretel room using the Sweets and Cinnamaroll furniture and other dessert-themed furniture like the dessert case, soft-serve lamp, marshmallow chair, etc. And of course, the brick oven and a piece of roasted dino meat. And while many of the more traditional house sets are in the game in a modified form (blue and green series are modified customization options of the wooden furniture, cabin more or less became the log DIYs and cabana more or less the rattan series), others are missing entirely (like the ranch series).

But overall, the ability to decorate and customize my town, the improved graphics, and the better dialogue all make me prefer NH.

I also used to play WoW, so I actually prefer the software-as-service model for events. Having to log on one specific day to complete a holiday is tricky when you have obligations, so having it spread it out more is preferable. (And unlike WoW, when there is a day-specific event, you can manipulate your clock if you miss it.) Playing NL so late in the game cycle, I felt really far behind and like I was racing to unlock all the things that I knew were in the game thanks to the gamefaqs and Thonky guides. With NH I've been discovering things alongside the community, which is more fun, and locking content behind updates preserves a lot of that fun.

I also think the relaxed pace of NH works better for my pre-pandemic adult life style where I work a 40 hour work week with a 40-60 minute commute each way (on a subway but often too crowded to sit and play) and have a social life and take classes and have other hobbies and so on. Bunny Day lasting two weeks means even a casual player can still participate fully--though there were too many eggs so they didn't get the balance right. You had a whole week to do the Rover maze so you could squeeze it in as your schedule permitted. I think the lockdowns have made it so a lot of people can play more hours than they would have otherwise, which is definitely affecting how these slower-paced events feel.

 

[Sharksheep]

I still play it a ton. I do a lot less trading now and more terraforming and decorating. If the pandemic didn't happen, I probably wouldn't be so frustrated by a lot of the mechanics because I would be playing at a much slower pace.

 

[TortimerCrossing]

Yeah I am pretty happy with my decision to time travel early on because otherwise it wouldve been too slow pace for me personally. I do wish the core furniture was all available immediately. My island is like 75% complete, but if it was 100% I don't even know if I would be motivated to play. I hope some updates come before I finish. I enjoy the seasonal stuff like wedding season, so I hope it comes frequently.

 

[insomniak]

It's not a JRPG, but you should try out the Witcher 3 if you have the time, I just picked it up for the first time the other day and it's pretty amazing.

 

[Raccoon Goon]

I like it a lot still. Maybe even more now that I've figured out the game mechanics. lol

 

[Uffe]

Every Animal Crossing game I've played, I've never felt burnt out by it. There are some things that do get repetitive, and I don't necessarily have to do those things, like going to Harv's Island to do Cyrus & Reese's anniversary photos, but I do, because of the stuff that they give. So at least there is an incentive. In terms of decorating and terra-forming the island, I'm currently stuck. I don't know how I want to redesign my island, and I'm still looking for an approach that won't take up too much space while also not making it feel like I have to squeeze through areas just to get around.

Animal Crossing on the GameCube will probably always be my favorite game. Either for nostalgic reasons, or that it was actually a great game. New Leaf being my second favorite, and New Horizons being my third favorite. I do like the new features they've added in New Horizons, but I also feel like furniture series have been reduced. As for JRPGs, I've never been a fan of RPG games. I did play Pokemon growing up, but my two most favorite JRPGs are EarthBound and Chrono Trigger. You've probably played them, but I thought I'd suggest them anyway since I don't know what you played.

 

[Crash]

-

 

[cheezu]

I LOVE the game.
NL was my favorite game of all time but right now I don't see myself going back to it.
As many other people have said, I do hope some of the features of NL return (really missing the Dreamsuite and some NPC's) but I don't mind the updates. With NL, I felt that once I joined the forums, I didn't really have anything new to discover. I could just read up on it and buy any item I wanted.
With NH, there's lot of novelty as we just don't know what the next update might entail.

I definitely don't feel burned out yet - the only time I felt a bit burned out was when I went Island hopping around 2 weeks ago to look for a villager.
I guess I do play a bit less than before, which is to be expected since, at this point, I've gathered a good bulk of the DIY recipes and what not.
I do all my chores in the morning before I start work and log back in several times throughout the day just for a short while to check up on my Island. Some nights I also go fishing.
I don't TT and I actually like that I've stuck to that decision since TT'ing during NL days kind of burned me out.