Wow! Out of the blue Nintendo has announced some big news for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It will be getting a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, but also a major free update for both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, on January 15th. You can watch the whole announcement on Youtube.
Earlier this year, I've been speculating about Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch 2 and a major update for New Horizons, similar to Splatoon 3, was the likeliest candidate for the near future. After all, both games got made by the same development staff. And it looks like this was on the money!
I didn't think that they would go for a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, however, but there isn't much to it. You get the 4k upgrade and there is support for the Joy-Con mouse controls, so it's quite similar to Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
The only questionable thing is the Microphone item, because calling out for your residents has been a much requested quality of life feature. Sometimes you are just looking for a specific villager and can't find them. So, to hide it behind the system's microphone is literally not a good call... Oh, and you can now play with up to 12 players at once online, for those who like online parties. The most I've ever played with was two.
But the upgrade to the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition only costs five bucks, so that's fair. And all the good stuff is waiting for you in free 3.0.0 update, so you can still enjoy all that on the Nintendo Switch. The 2.0.0 update was said to be the last major one, but I'm very happy that they've changed their minds about this, because this game really needs these content additions to stay interesting.
The resort hotel seems a bit silly for multiple reasons. I always thought that it was sad how Kapp'n sings about this family and even keeps a photo of them in his boat, but always stays at your pier. The easy solution would have been to make him leave after your daily boat ride. But I suppose you can also just bring his whole family to your island...
It's funny and makes good use of the free space on the water, but the feature itself just seems like a lite version of the Happy Home Paradise DLC. It is the exact same mechanics, just without the exteriors and the resort island. It also makes the campsite feel completely redundant now.
The storage upgrade is a godsend. I've hit the limit of 5000 items a while ago, because I've been using it mainly for collections. I've got all Gyroids in there, all fossils, all critters and their models, all the special event items, lots of photos, and so on. And if you want an extensive wardrobe on top, then 5000 isn't enough. 9000 should do, however.
Maybe I could use the new Slumber Islands to display a part of the collection, e.g. all the models. That's also an excellent feature, which effectively lets you create a second, third and fourth island within the game, but as a blank canvas for decorations. So, you won't have the Resident Services in your way and it will be free from the game's usual mechanics. You can even freely set the time of the day and the weather. This alone is a massive feature that can be enjoyed for many hours.
This wasn't mentioned in the trailer, but shown briefly: you can now finally craft multiple copies of an item at once! This is fantastic, especially for something like fish bait.
But you already know what the most important part of the announcement was, right? Not the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, not the hotel, not the Slumber Islands, not the quality of life features... No... The LEGO! Just kidding...
But when they started talking about "collaborations", I was freaking out. Ever since I had started my own island about four years ago, I've been waiting for them to bring back the Zelda items and villagers, because I was building things with them in mind. But for some reason they never bothered... until now.
Well, at first they had talked about classic Nintendo systems. In past Animal Crossing games, you had the option to play a variety of emulated games. But here it looks like it's only one select game per system and you will need a Nintendo Switch Online membership for it, which is oddly restrictive. The LEGO stuff also seemed weird at first, but then I remembered that there are actual Animal Crossing LEGO sets, so it's nice to have this both ways.
During that part I was getting a little anxious that they might be doing all sorts of weird crossovers again, like the Hello Kitty stuff, and not the one that truly matters. But there it was: contents from The Legend of Zelda and Splatoon will finally return! They do require you to scan amiibo, however, and only these two franchises are back.
A collaboration with Metroid would have been amazing as well, but maybe this will still happen and I'm just happy we're getting Zelda stuff again. I'll talk about that in a separate post, because there is a lot to cover here.
Now, I'm actually still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons regularly, but this has changed from once per day to once per week. I had reached all my goals and finished my island to what I wanted it to be, so all that is left to do is plugging weeds, hoping for some missing crafting recipes and checking shops for items that I have yet to catalog. But these new contents will give me enough reason to start the game more often and I'm really looking forward to January 15th.
No comments:
Post a Comment