#i think a lot of players came to acnh without playing the previous games + a lot of sims players picked it up too

[poorlittlevampire]

as a massive ac fan i understand the frustration but this is how nintendo has run for a while now lol they stopped focusing on it bc there was money to be made elsewhere (like splat3 which apparently shared a lot of the same devs, and most were moved from ac to work on splat from what ive heard)

[aforestlife]

i feel the same way about acnh! i don't really think it's lacking content. i've played most of ac games and i've learned that every once in a while i need to step away from it, just to pick it up again a few weeks later. new horizons is for sure different to all the previous games, but not in a worse way – it's just how animal crossing works. you play, you get bored, you stop playing for some time, then feel the urge to play like crazy again. it happens to me with new horizons and it happened to me with new leaf as well. and that's okay! it's still my favorite game ever. at least that's my opinion

I'm glad you agree and see what I mean! I feel like the "there's nothing to do when you've ____" (fill in the blank with paid off your loan, finish your town/museum, or even just played through a year) is one the most common things said about any Animal Crossing game, not just New Horizons.

I've gathered from people that New Leaf just had a massive impact and everyone loved the heck out of it and everything it added, the Main Street, the cafe and police station you could build, the island... So I think that's where the criticism comes from. I think the reason we didn't get these things is because of the desert island concept. You could tell Nintendo was really hyping that up, like every promo vid was a tent with the campsite cookware. I bet Nintendo has heard this criticism and that the next gen AC game if there is one, will go back to having a full-fledged AC cast and shopping district.

I enjoy the AC NPCs and all the things NL added, don't get me wrong... but it's also not really 100% why I play. I'm the sort of player who won't go in Kicks anymore when I have all the shoes, won't go in Harriets if I have my haircut down pat, won't go do minigames usually unless I'm playing with friends. But walking around my town and vibing out and enjoying what I've created? Seeing my villagers, and so on? That's what I focus on when I visit NL actually, and that's the maim appeal for me in any AC game. When I play WW I'm not lamenting all those things, I'm just enjoying the vibe of the town and making it my own and all that. I never even built the coffee shop in NL 👀

You can criticize that NH is only for decorators, but I feel like super long-term AC play is usually geared towards decorating anyways, even in old games. I remember in NL here in the tumblr community, it was the dream address feature that kept so many playing years after the game came out. People saw decorating and releasing themed/aesthetic towns as one of the long-term appeals back then as well, after exhausting the beginning game content.

I think NH would benefit from more of the quirky add-on content, NPCs, updates in general, and so on. Like I think multiplayer isn't nearly as fun as it should be without the minigames (we shouldn't have to create our own with the precedent NL set with the island and the fact that we pay to use the online service now), and I think we could use more furniture patches and more traveling NPCs at the plaza at the very least. But I'm not really mad at NH for not being NL because I can tell they were going for a new feel, and I'm not as mad about the other things as some because I guess it's not really why I play the game long-term anyways. But heck, as far as island decorating and patterms, I can do things I never could have dreamed of in NL or past games. In NL putting a few well-placed public works and foliage was about the extent of it, but it's just wild what you can do in NH now. The happiness I feel walking around my perfect Shire town or excitement at building an illusion castle or something more than makes up for not having those NPCs, shops, or gyroids. I'm not a NH dialog hater either really, I've found it fun and cute at times ans most of the time when I play NL and WW I see stuff I've already seen as well. It's finite in every game. They've actually added dialog in some of the updates, people say.

Anyway sorry for the long reply, I guess I have a lot of thoughts on this. And we're all valid in how we feel about the game, and I think it's human nature to want to share opinions and seek likeminded people. People who think NH is unfinished have a right to feel that way and to find others who feel the same, as do us.