Started Animal Crossing: New Horizons

It has been a quiet month so far and this probably won't change, unless Nintendo is delivering one of their September Nintendo Directs this year. But we probably will have to wait until their next big release, which is Metroid Dread on October 8th, together with the Nintendo Switch OLED model.

In any case, it's the perfect time to catch up with some (Nintendo Switch) games – whether that's games in your backlog or games that you've wanted to play for a while, it doesn't really matter, as long as it's fun. In my case it wasn't something on the backlog, but a game that I've been looking at for quite some time now and finally decided to try it myself – Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

This was one of the most popular games in 2020 and while the hype is already over, it's still worthwhile to get into this game. As a Zelda fan you will most likely have heard about Animal Crossing before – may it be from Super Smash Bros., from the Zelda cameo items that are in those games or simply because it's from Nintendo and very popular.

Anyway, Animal Crossing is a rather simple and open loan repayment social simulation with anthropomorphic animals, where you gather materials and design your own village or, in case of New Horizons, your own island. It's in many ways like Harvest Moon, just without crops, livestock, and the pressure of making as much money as quickly as possible. The latter still helps, but you can really do things in your own pace.

Because I enjoyed the early Harvest Moon games and because I like Nintendo games in general, I've always been toying with the idea of playing Animal Crossing, but I was usually put off by its real time aspect and its usage of events, because I hate missing things in games and I don't want to feel inclined to play a game at specific times.

Now, in the era of free-to-play games with constant events, daily challenges, and all that stuff, this is just business as usual and was especially problematic in Pocket Camp, where my first contact with the franchise wasn't a good one. However, New Horizons is far from as bad and demanding, where the game lets you do most things at your own pace. Plus, you can change the clock of your Nintendo Switch if things need be, though I personally want to avoid this and find it exciting to try the game at different times of the day whenever I can.

Also, I've learned that the mindset of "gotta collect it all" isn't really appropriate in a game of such a scale, since you have limited space anyway and you should just focus on the things that you want to have. It's still fun to catch and collect all the different fossils, insects, fish, sea creatures and art pieces in order to complete the museum, however, where this can be compared to your typical collectible quest and is entirely different from getting furniture, decorations, clothing, and so on.

In fact, a lot of it feels like an Adventure game and even reminds me of Zelda to an extent, at least in the early game. There you can only access a part of the island, but then you get the vaulting pole to cross rivers and later the ladder to climb up to higher levels, which both gives you access to other fish, insects, and resources. Animal Crossing: New Horizons really makes me want a new top-down Zelda game that is more extensive and lets you do these things inside a beautifully crafted world, together with all the other goodness that comes with a Zelda game... But this game will have to do for now and also comes with the merit of enjoying your island life in more personal and creative ways.

The island theme really hits a nerve, where islands in video games have a special place in my heart. After all, I got into gaming on the GameBoy and its various digital islands, like Mario Land, Kitchen Island, and of course Koholint. It's also something that I've enjoyed a lot in other games, like The Wind Waker or Phantom Hourglass. Speaking of, visually this feels very similar to the Nintendo DS Zelda games, both in tone and how everything is laid out in the world design.

It even crossed my mind to recreate something from these games, like Mercay Island, or some part of Link's Awakening, like the Animal Village. But of course I wouldn't be the first to do any of this and instead of being fixated on remaking environments from other video games, I just want to do whatever I feel like...

 

The Legendary Plan

So, my island is called "Dodolint", as a pun on Dodo (Airlines) and Koholint, with a Windfish pixel art as its flag (based on the Nightmare boss chamber in Link's Awakening DX) and the Metroid "Get Item" melody as its island tune, for now. It's still all in the early stages, where I don't have much to show and the whole Zelda theme hasn't come fruition yet. I'm mostly focused on collecting all the different critters that are available right now, as well as planning my overall island by moving around buildings and thinking about what villagers I want in the future.

My hopes are that Nintendo will release a big Zelda update in the next months, which brings back most of the Zelda contents from Animal Crossing: New Leaf, including the four Zelda villagers: Epona, Ganon, Medli, and Wolf Link. Those are hilarious and I'm really banking on them making a comeback later on. After all, New Horizons has almost all past villagers with a few exceptions, where they've already brought back some of the missing Welcome amiibo villagers with the 1.9.0 update earlier this year...

But I'm really just preparing things for such an update, so that I have everything in place once it's available. As for the rest, I've made a list of other four personality types with the villagers that should fit a Zelda theme the best (check out all of them on the wiki):

• Ankha (snooty cat)
• Lucky (lazy dog)
  
• Phoebe (sisterly ostrich)
  
• Sterling (jock eagle)
  

Sterling is the most obvious one, because he's a knight that comes with a medieval theme. Then there's Lucky, who is essentially a Gibdo dog and even came with Zelda items in his house in earlier Animal Crossing titles, where this is probably the villager with the biggest Zelda connection besides the four ones that directly came from Zelda.

Ankha has an Egyptian theme that fits an Adventure island generally quite well, plus you have desert temples and an entire Egyptian tribe (with the Cobble Kingdom) in the Zelda games, so it's not a bad fit in any case. Phoebe doesn't have such a strong connection as the others on this list, but at least the inside of her house is a lava cave. Plus, she looks really cool.

As for the remaining two slots, I might just rotate these or pick whatever I like best, where currently I'd like to get Coco. But let's see... Luckily, you can use amiibo / amiibo cards for all of these, so getting these villagers will be easy enough, because with amiibo you can replace an existing villager of your choice at any time. Otherwise you would need the right villager to leave and then find the right villager in time by using Nook Miles Tickets. Or be very lucky with the campsite... Speaking of being lucky...

The Bumpy Start

While this is all fun and exciting, getting into the game was actually quite awkward, because a lot of it is left to chance. You might enjoy getting something completely randomized, but if you have specific ideas for your island, then the lack of options is really frustrating.

You're only given the choice between four different randomly generated island and you can't trigger a new seed. If you want different choices, you will have to restart the entire game and all the other dialogues with Tom Nook, where you enter your name and so on. And even then it will be random what starting villagers you get, what fruits and flowers you have, among other things...

Here it helps a lot to know which things can be changed later on and therefore don't matter, like the starting villagers. And what things can't be changed and therefore will stay like they are forever. Overall the entire terrain of the island can be changed, with the exception of the location of the service center. So, anything else on the "inside" of the island shouldn't really matter, but of course it's still nice to have something that you like somewhat, because it will take a long time until you can start terraforming.

The shoreline, however, is completely fixed and you won't be able to change any of it. This includes the location and size of your pier, the spit, and coastal rocks, as well as the location of the river mouths, the secret beach, and the airport. The latter will also have one of four colors, which can't be changed for some reason. And while the flowers don't really matter, your main fruit does.

So, these are a lot of variables and the game doesn't really let you make any choices, other then the four islands it has generated for you. It would have been nice to generate new ones on the spot. It also would have been nice to see what fruits and airport color these islands have in advance. And ideally, you could still change the latter later on.

Well, once you've got past all of this and finally made a choice that you're somewhat happy with (you probably won't get it all, unless you're insanely patient), then the game really doesn't cover itself in "quality of life" measures. While it's supposed to be a laid-back experience, where you dilly-dally through the game, it still should respect your time more than it does.

Like, why can't I craft multiple of the same item at once? Why don't manila clams stack? Why is Harvey's island the only place where I can put things into my storage from afar? These and many other similar questions can be simply answered with "because Nintendo", where we all know that they are terribly stubborn about not making things more comfortable...

But overall the early game is really enjoyable and adventurous with its theme of camping on a deserted island. Of course things get more and more urbanized the more you play, where some of the nature charm is inevitably lost, but at least it feels like you're making some progress.

Let's see how far my efforts will go. I probably won't be blogging more about this, unless we really get a big Zelda update for the game. If this were to be the case, then Animal Crossing: New Horizons would naturally have more relevance for this blog and it would be interesting to show some of the Zelda-themed things. Until then...