Emily Ryner

Unpopular opinion: Animal Crossing New Horizons is vastly inferior to Animal Crossing New Leaf for a myriad of reasons. Seriously, I've consistently played and replayed Animal Crossing New Leaf since I bought it at a used game shop around six years ago, and I've been excited every time I've played to discover new characters and items, even unlocking things I'd not realized previously were in the game. My boyfriend purchased New Horizons for us at the (very lonely) beginning of the pandemic, and for the first few weeks, I had fun exploring islands in search of new islanders, playing around with the new crafting system, and setting up my island to look like my own personal paradise. But then, I finished the game. Other than personalization items from messages in bottles/balloons/islanders/etc., there was nothing more to unlock. I expected that New Horizons would build itself up from New Leaf to have more going on, and in some ways, it did. But as a person who doesn't have wifi or a lot of friends with the Switch console in general, my experience was a disappointment as the game heavily relies on interaction with other real life people and their islands for its content. Sure, if you have the means to have those interactions, I'm sure that buys you some more time playing without feeling tired or bored of the content, but for me? I regret we spent the money on it just to ask ourselves "Is that it?" a couple weeks later.