Summary
As a young girl with a Nintendo GameCube and a budding love for cozy games, I was well withinAnimal Crossing’s primary demographic when the first game launched in North America in 2002. Having played each title for hundreds of hours (if not thousands – don’t check my Switch profile), I thought I was firm in my stance that New Leaf still reigned supreme over all the other games.
Yes, New Horizons was critical to a lot of people’s handling of the 2020 Covid shutdowns, including mine, and yes, it added a ton of interesting mechanics to the series that fans like me had wanted for years. Naturally, I reveled in it while I was out of work that year, co-opting a cozy island life as a replacement for a real one.
After life began to return to normal,I met my partner in early 2022. He told me New Horizons was his first Animal Crossing game, and I told him that it was delightful, but New Leaf was better. I’ve since developed a habit ofgiving him a game I love that he’s never playedas part of his birthday gift each year, so I slid a copy of New Leaf into the bag holding his presents a couple months ago. We waited until a staycation to snuggle up and dive in together.
I’d agreed to start a new town for sake of fairness, so Rover’s smirk and sass greeted us right away. The warning that he couldn’t terraform startled my partner long before he was given his four potential town maps, and he became hyper-aware of where everything was in a way he never had to be in New Horizons. We settled on maps, named our towns, and arrived at the train station.
The Changes I Liked In New Horizons Felt Glaring In New Leaf
Neither of us were happy with our starting villagers. I had not one but two frogs,my least favorite species in the game, while he got stuck with Rodney,the internet’s least favorite hamster. No matter: I always put my house as far from everyone as possible, with a scenic view and nobody around to bother me, so this wasn’t a huge issue. Eventually, the frogs even began to grow on me, and I learned to appreciate Drift constantly calling me “brah” and dancing gleefully in the rain without an umbrella.
As I began to settle into my new town, I missed my original town but was cautiously optimistic about my new one. So when I walked outside one day and saw a cordoned-off house construction plot approximately five feet from my home and at an imperfect kiddie-corner angle, I was irate. Everyone else had clustered together up near Retail, conveniently crafting a neighborhood I planned to spruce up with the limited offerings available through community projects. Things got worse when I saw Katt moving into the new house, a villager I don’t like.
She was my introduction to the sisterly types, and I found her way too passive-aggressive; Katt was one of the last villagers I’d have picked to stare wistfully at the sea beside me. Since I couldn’t move either of our houses, all I could do about my unwanted neighbor was bury Pitfall Seeds as a dividing line between my yard and hers. I’m notoriously aggressive in cozy games when I dislike a character, and oh, how I yearned to smack her right upside her big, dumb, fuzzy head. I think the Nooklings are onto my malicious intent, though, because they refuse to stock Bug Nets in their tiny starter shop, and we’re several time travel days in now.
The old town’s charm is still much more vibrant than in New Horizons, but while there were plenty of parts I missed, there were elements in New Horizons I found myself savoring more when comparing the games directly. My partner and I are a ways away from unlocking Gracie, one of my favorite characters who didn’t make it to New Horizons (outside of the Roost, that is), but I’m trying to assuage him with some of the other old faces he didn’t know on moving to town.He doesn’t much care for Phyllis, the overnight clerk at the post office with absolutely no patience for you, though he’s quickly growing to love the alpacas at Retail, mostly because Reese pays more for the apples he’s selling than Timmy and Tommy.
The Final Verdict
They say hindsight is 20/20, and despite having spent my real 2020 neck-deep in the New Horizons and claiming the last game had been better, I’m not sure I believe that anymore. New Horizons fixed a lot of things from New Leaf – being able to put furniture outside was a literal game-changer, terraforming gave us creative freedom like never before, and mixing in elements of Happy Home Designer offered almost anything we could have asked for.
But what it also gave us was neutered villagers, which is, arguably, the main draw of the game. I quickly stopped talking to everyone in New Horizons because they said the same lines on repeat. As much as I hated the passive-aggression of the sisterly types before, I missed how they felt different from other personalities. I miss when cranky villagers were almost impossible to befriend, and when snooty villagers would be outright rude to you. I know Nintendo is the family-friendly game brand, but please stop telling me about your muscles, jock villagers, the “abs” joke was funny the first 500 times.
My visit back to New Leaf helped me takeoff the rose-colored glasses I had for the game and made me approach it more realistically. It was more stylized, sure, but it lacks in other areas where New Horizons thrived. I’ve started to think my perfect Animal Crossing game would be some hybrid of the two, so once the next console comes out and you guys are ready for a new Animal Crossing title, Nintendo, my contact info’s in my bio.
