The world is not the same as it was a couple of months ago. A lot of people are forced to stay at home and have to limit their time outside to the bare minimum. It’s no surprise we’re all looking for an escape from reality, we’re looking for a place where everything feels normal and where we can just live our life the way we want to. Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers the perfect escapism.
Welcome on your island
If you’ve been following the Animal Crossing franchise for a while, you know there’s always a small twist to your new life. The biggest twist in New Horizons is its deserted island. You’re no longer just a villager or mayor of a growing town, no, you’re part of an entire island; which feels amazing. You start your adventure with just a tent and have to work your way up to a big house and tons of extra features. Unlike other games in the franchise, you start things rather quickly. Instead of paying Tom Nook with Bells, the local currency, you can pay off your first debt with the newly introduced Nook Miles. By performing certain tasks, you gain Nook Miles and once you gathered the needed amount to pay off your first debt, the true adventure starts. Thanks to this new mechanic, you’re quickly playing the main game where your daily routine becomes your new favorite addiction.
Start your new life
The best thing about Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the fact that you can live the life you want and follow your own daily routine. My routine consists out of checking up with my adorable neighbors, digging for fossils, trying to catch a lot of fish, selling valuable items, and if I have some spare time, decorate my island a little more. But that’s not the only way to play, of course, it’s important to find your own routine and pacing, there’s no wrong way to play Animal Crossing. In order to keep you motivated, New Horizons comes with some interesting new features. The previously mentioned Nook Miles offer daily challenges where you can gain stamps and extra Nook Miles for completing tasks. There are daily rotating smaller tasks such as ‘catch five fish’ and bigger tasks that will take more time such as ‘catch one hundred fish’. In my opinion, Nook Miles are a great addition to the main game as it gives you a purpose to visit your island daily. It gives you a clear goal without ever forcing you to clear all of those tasks as fast as possible. Where I often struggled to find purpose in the older Animal Crossing games, I can easily set daily goals in New Horizons, which is a huge leap forward.
On top of that also comes the newly introduced DIY mechanism, which elevates the immersion and realism of living on a deserted island a bit more. In order to perform your daily tasks, you’ll need a couple of tools. A fishing rod to catch fish, a net to catch some bugs, a shovel to dig for fossils, an ax to cut down some trees and many more other, useful, tools. Since you’re living on a deserted island, you’ll need to gather the right resources and create the tool of your desire on a workbench. Gone are the days you had a tool for the rest of your life. If you want a tool in New Horizons, you’ll have to work for it and they’ll break if you use them too much, forcing you to gather even more recourses. It’s a new feature that I personally liked, moving from my flimsy net to a stronger one felt like a victory, even when it eventually snapped in two since I caught too many bugs. The only downside about the new DIY mechanism is the fact that some tools break a bit too fast and this can start to become annoying. Imagine your relaxing fishing evening bein interrupted by a broken fishing rod… Not exactly fun. If you had a problem with breaking swords in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you won’t like this new direction of Animal Crossing at all. But, DIY goes a lot further than just tool creating.
Collect them all
When it comes to DIY, the game is filled with recipes that help you craft new tools and furniture. If you want to collect them all, you’ll have to talk to your neighbors, buy some with your Nook Miles or Bells and overall, spend a lot of time in the game. It’s another great thing to collect next to fish, bugs, and fossils. Finding new recipes and crafting everything with the resources you can find on your island is extremely addictive. Since there’s so much to craft, your room to stock everything has been greatly improved and is always accessible from your virtual home. I really like how the team tackled this and found a way of perfectly combining the best of both worlds. People can still buy new furniture in store but if they want to craft, they have tons of options too.
This also goes for the clothing. You can buy new clothes from the infamous Able Sisters or you can create and share your own designs with ease. Everything about New Horizons is made in order for you to enjoy the game just the way you want to. When it comes to collecting, this is by far the best entry in the franchise, even the interior of the museum is completely revamped to encourage you to gather and donate the entire collection, it will keep you busy for months to come.
Share your island with friends
Now since there’s a lot to achieve in New Horizons, it comes as no surprise that you’re able to share all of this with your friends, both online as offline. You can invite over friends, which happens through codes, to enjoy your island together. Once arrived you can see everything the island has to offer and you can even interact with the environment to collect recourses you’re lacking on your island back home. The interaction is rather limited and you can’t freely roam around on your friend’s island until he/she agrees to your leadership of the party but besides that, it’s a great way to get inspired and bring back some rare goods to your own island. If you don’t have friends with a Nintendo Switch console, you can visit randomly-generated islands with the help of Nook Miles. These islands give you the same opportunity of collecting the resources you’re lacking although there’s a bit more luck involved. This offers a great solution to those unable to access the online multiplayer of the game.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the multiplayer is the fact that you’re forced to share one island per household. Your partner can’t create a new island on the same Nintendo Switch system, which leads to a complex way of enjoying the game to its fullest when you decide to inhabit the island with several persons in your household. It’s not the best way to tackle local multiplayer but then again, Animal Crossing never supported this option before.
You’re in full control of your island
Where the multiplayer might lack some options for some, the main game certainly goes the extra mile. If you reach a certain point in the game, you’re able to take full control over your island thanks to your terraforming permit. From that moment on you can decide where the rivers should go, how high the cliff should be and where paths should be placed. Once you reach this level of ownership, you can truly create the island of your dreams, even giving you the option to relocate certain buildings for a small cost. It’s this amount of content that makes New Horizons such an amazing game. The fun never really stops as you can spend hours creating the island of your dreams while still keeping track of your daily progress. It’s by far the biggest entry in the franchise and I’m pretty sure you’ll spend hundreds of hours trying to create a five-star island.
Conclusion:
Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers the perfect escapism. The fact that this review took me longer than anticipated because I lost myself on my virtual island just proves this even more. Although the multiplayer options might be lacking for some and the DIY mechanism can result in frustration, there’s simply no better feeling like wandering around on your very own virtual island, always trying to find something new. It’s one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch and it’s a game that can be enjoyed for a very long time to come.
