Animal Crossing Series

[dotmidi]

I can believe most of us are possibly an average animal crossing enjoyer or fan, So my question is what might be your favorite game from the series?
I.. despise New Horizons for a multitude of reasons but I've come to realize people actually don't find New Leaf the superior game like I have! SO I want some input on your favorite installment of the series and why 

[creaturefeature]

I like new Leaf, althought I might sound biased since I havent played horizons.

Mostly because you get to play as the Mayor also better graphics. I do love the dream town mechanic where you can see other people´s towns without having to have their friend code. And i thought the whole streetpass implemetation where you got the house decor of players neraby cool too.

[dotmidi]

I like new Leaf, althought I might sound biased since I havent played horizons.

  I am also possibly quite biased since I haven't played anything past New Leaf.. I plan on trying out City Folk though

[larvapuppy]

I like all the games for different reasons.

I think New Leaf is where the games started to really become about conforming the town to players' wishes, since you're the mayor and you have more control over how the town looks, ordinances, and so on. There's a nice balance where there are certain things you have no control or limited control over, but there are still plenty of options for customization. Plus Isabelle is adorable.

New Horizons made everything hyper-customizable to the point where the goal is to get all of the cute items and villagers and make your island look perfect. The villagers are always kind to you and compliment you, and it's almost like a paradise when you log in. Unfortunately it means that once you have all of the items and upgrades that you want, booting up the game feels a little pointless. I had a lot of fun playing it until I got to that point though; I think I have several hundred hours logged in the game. It satisfies my desire to decorate a dollhouse.

If I have to choose, I'll pick Wild World as my favourite. It's portable and fun, I played it a lot as a kid so it has that nostalgia factor as well. The villagers feel like fully-realized characters with flaws because they aren't constantly polite. And, it's more simple than New Horizons- I can play for an hour or so at a time and I don't feel the need to collect 38234094820938 cute things to display in my town.

[CableCat]

I played Wild World, City Folk, New Leaf, and now New Horizons.

I am enjoying the level of creativity with town and home building in New Horizons. Also the reactions, and playing online with others. But they lost an essence that was at the core of Animal Crossing games when they switched from "You're a villager and your friends are the animals, and yeah, life sucks and you gotta pay your debt but it's chill, we live in a peaceful village, go make friends" to "Play ONLINE and interact with OTHER HUMANS, and BUILD your own extravagant town to show off ONLINE, and do interior design, and wedding design, etc. etc. and the animals are chill but say the same things over and over and are more window decoration and ways to get items for NEW DESIGNS."

There is nothing wrong with having a design game, playing online, or liking having attractive and cute villagers over ugly ones. Those elements have been a part of the Animal Crossing experience since early on, but they were not the central part!

It is for that reason that Wild World still sticks with me, even more than New Horizons. My villagers were HILARIOUS, and so were the notes in the bottles I'd get on the beach! And you could still play online back then, it just wasn't as streamlined as now. Connecting to wifi as a kid was kind of a pain. But it worked once you connected and had it memorized in your system! Wild World had a great game guide book, and all kinds of little secrets. And as odd as it is to say, I enjoyed that the game had LESS content. You lived in a village and that was basically it! There was more focus on the main "goals" of animal crossing, like talking with your neighbors (because you wanted to, not because you'd get points for it), fishing, hunting bugs, and paying off your debt, and filling your museum. The other things, like getting furniture, going to Brewsters and seeing KK, etc... You did mostly just for fun. Not because you'd get some credit points for it. You might unlock a secret or some dialogue after a long time of casually doing those activities.


What I'm getting at here is that many people who jumped onto the mainline Animal Crossing from Pocket Camp or as brand new players had so many "goalposts" and "objectives" in New Horizons that they talked about Animal crossing as if it was a game you had to "beat"... And lots of people burnt themselves out by trying to "Win". I saw a lot of people who didn't understand how animal crossing was before. There were town rankings even in Wild World! But it wasn't a star system of ranking. It was just comments from your villagers about whether or not they liked living in town and if you were basically a good neighbor/friend or not... Not a good town representative/mayor/dictator. And the villagers would tell you if they hated you! And they would not ask to leave your town. They were completely independent. You had to build a sense of emotional intelligence and empathy to play the old games, you couldn't just tell a villager "No" if they wanted to leave. You had to be a good person and have conversations with them! If you didn't, they wouldn't consider you a good or trustworthy friend.

Even back then almost 20 years ago, we did stuff like Bell cheats, time traveling (and losing a bunch of our villagers for it and alienating the remaining ones), and trying to score rare items and have customized towns. There was fun in the challenge of trying to figure out how to do those things with the limited gameplay, and there was less pressure because it wasn't perfect to start with and fewer people would see your town. If your villagers were happy, trash and weeds were removed, and you had just enough trees and flowers, your town was perfect. You didn't need to have full structures outside or anything, or a bunch of paid projects.

Also I wish so badly they would bring back Celeste's constellation-maker activity in the planetarium in the museum. That was one of my FAVORITE parts of Wild World!

[dotmidi]

and the animals are chill but say the same things over and over

  This is what I hate most is seeing all my favorite funny creature become so one dimensional, I had a really intense attachment and friendship with tangy since I played New Leaf for years and she was my favorite as a kid until she moved away a few years later..
New Horizons I was so excited to see her again but I just knew it wouldn't hold up because all the villagers only have THREE LINES!  they ended up like robots instead of someone to talk to if i don't have any fun ideas in game

[Melooon]

I am not sure that any game will ever capture the intensity and mood of playing the game cube version in the den under my bed on a hand-me-down 1980s colour TV secretly at night when I was 8  It was so mysterious and so full of lore and unexpected moments; the villagers were almost spooky and often harsh (and they always stood way too close to you); Wisp the ghost was more of an urban myth than someone you ever met; Red felt like he was really sketchy; the dump felt super trashy and somewhere you'd avoid; and the police station always exuded a feeling of quiet control and danger. Nook was like a grubby middle-aged businessman who forced you to work for him or go homeless; I had a stove/fireplace shop in my house; somehow this game was almost trashy but in the best way. It almost feels like a memory of a ludic dream now.

THAT SAID; all of that is looked at through the eyes of nostalgia and the game itself had some really annoying technical limitations; almost all of which were fixed and improved in Wild World. Plus the multi-player in Wild World was a quantum leap forward! We had a sinister wild world gang in school where we would go around to people in the schoolyard and convince them to let us into their town (we all had scary outfits, mine was the Tutankhamun mask) and we'd all have axes and look threatening  (I think we cut down one tree once then felt bad)

After that City Folk was basically just Wild World with a somewhat poorly implemented city stuck on to it; I like the super expensive shop and the better online play, but its worth skipping.

Leaf was fine; the town was better than in City Folk, but it never quite clicked for me; buying socks was fun!

Horizons is a great game and it was perfect for the pandemic; the characters are cute, the gamification stuff is fine, and the landscaping is great; but somehow it misses a lot of the mood that the early games had - I would say its a little too good, its overpolished.

So I think that Wild World is the best of them so far 

[wetnoodle]

I think New Horizons had enough new things to do that I can easily place it as my number 1, number 2 might be tied for me honestly with Gamecube and Wild World. I think I like the gamecube one more but with it being on my ds I was able to play wild world a lot more.

[owlhari]

we love animal crossing a lot! think we've played every game in the series, though the first we really have memory of is wild world. the sky on the top screen of the DS was always really pretty, and wild world's music makes us the most nostalgic. city folk was really cool too. we had a little gay crush on kicks the skunk oops

new leaf was where we really poured our heart out, though. we were an active user on the bell tree forums (anyone remember that?) since new leaf was released. it felt so cool to customize the town in ways it was never possible before. and dream towns! they were so much fun. especially that one famous horror town with the doll. hacking new leaf always looked like so much fun. we dabbled a bit with hacking a few years ago, got a splatoon amiibo villager to move in. it was cool.

we were really excited for new horizons and racked up a ton of hours really fast. we'd do our dailies in online zoom class, whoops. it got boring after about a year, when we learned that the events were going to be the same every year and we mostly just got bored of it all. we'd collected all our favorite villagers, decorated our town to a satisfying degree, had most of the furniture. decorating houses was really fun though, happy home designer might actually be our favorite in the series despite not really being a "main" game.

[Icey!]

The only AC game I've played is New Horizons which I am very well enjoying, but I have heard about how the writing in the characters was better in the older titles.

[Thorn]

I'm honestly torn between Wild World and New Horizons. I love the clothing design options on New Horizons (the things I could only dream of designing with the 2000s graphics), the swimming options are great, the island decorating and remodeling is awesome, and the graphics make the museum absolutely incredible. However, I liked the NPCs a hell of a lot more back in the Wild World days. They had so much more character, so many more interactions.

[grubbyfox]

I've only every played New Leaf, and I really love it. Horizons looks amazing and all in like, the style and how detailed it is etc. New leaf is so blurry/grainy etc compared, but I still adore it. It's such a little safe space to just calm down in. For some reason, I always get so so sleepy whenever I play it 

[bees]

I play NH sometimes but I love NL. I've even added a little info/journal section to my site about my NL town! I've also been playing the Gamecube game lately and I'm really enjoying it. I've made a tentative journal for it but haven't shared with anyone yet haha.

[Melooon]

Since you can play DS emulators on iPhone now I started a new wild world save on my phone - it kinda seems like the perfect mobile version since it was designed to be played entirely with the touchscreen - but I think I'll need to make a nicer emulator skin - also I think I might put the controls between the two screens, that seems like a more natural position for hands!

[bees]

Since you can play DS emulators on iPhone now I started a new wild world save on my phone - it kinda seems like the perfect mobile version since it was designed to be played entirely with the touchscreen - but I think I'll need to make a nicer emulator skin - also I think I might put the controls between the two screens, that seems like a more natural position for hands!

That's cool! How's the framerate? I've tried to play WW on my 3DS but it didn't feel very smooth and gave me motion sickness :(