I suppose it's hard to plan on making a review of a game when my rule of making these is to complete the storyline first, then write. But Animal Crossing has no storyline and I needed to set a goal. I eventually settled on completing my town and my house, but I can see that those two won't be completed for a few more months, so I'm cutting corners on this one and reporting now.
Your only objective is to make money, buy furniture and clothes, and make the most of your experience however you can, just like the older Animal Crossing games. For most people like me, this game is a bit left field since there is no true storyline and there is no real method to beat the game, unless you collect all items I suppose and deck your town off with the most amount of public work projects your town can take.
City Folk left me a bit unsatisfied since the whole City thing was a mostly asinine experience since I barely used it except to learn emotions, shine my shoes, and get the Silver Shovel. Needless to say, New Leaf needed a bigger and better innovation akin to the GC Animal Crossing to Wild World. I can happily say that New Leaf has exceeded my expectations and more.
New Leaf adds more clothing options such as dresses, tank tops, pants, and shoes, which you can fully customize at your own whim. Some items and furniture sets have been added and even some new interesting tools, but the two new ones are subpar at best. The wetsuit however was a nice new touch, allowing us to finally swim, albeit limitedly, to the ocean. Still, skindiving is a lot of fun. The tropical island is also particularly great since it's an easy method to rake in bells, especially at night when there is an abundance of tropical beetles.
But enough of that small stuff, the bigger new feature needs to be addressed. Upon arriving in your town (albeit the first person to play on the game card), you find out that you are the mayor-to-be of (insert-town-name-here). As mayor you are allowed to build certain new features to the town including statues, lighthouses, and trash cans. All to make your town better. You also can get request from neighbors and shopkeepers to build new shops including Kick's shoe store, Club LOL, and a second floor for the Museum. All of the new shops adds something new: Club LOL has nightly dance parties (Except Saturday for K.K. Slider's show), the Dream Suite allows players to enter dream versions of other people's town, and the Café where you can drink coffee or work and become a brewing master. But I've strayed a little bit from the main focus of Mayor hood. You have a much bigger responsibility now maintaining your town, but it all isn't too bad since you can also encourage ordinances to have the neighbor keep the town in good shape. All in all, this mayor feature is great, but if you play as a non mayor character, then the game is significantly less fun
Surprisingly, I found few flaws of the game as the game keeps the same old problems of no real goal and somewhere down the line you'll stop playing and perhaps somewhere in the future, you'll pick up the game again and find your town in ruins. Despite the large amount of power you have, the Mayor duty feels rather hollow and limited as you'll need to forge friendships and hope your neighbors will put in the requests for a public works project, especially the police station. We should have more power, like perhaps, convincing whatever citizen we want to move out of town or choosing what neighbors we want (because I wanted Agent S or Punchy so bad). But other than that, I enjoyed the game overall
Oh and props to Animal Crossing for adding a statue of King Kamehameha to the game, that was so cool when I first saw it.
Nonny's Rating: 8/10. The innovation of this game makes it much more interesting than the last game and will be a fun game for new and veteran players for a little while at least.
Nonny's Tips: The Tropical Island should be abused at every oppertunity. After most trips, you should be able to rack around 500,000 Bells Max with around 350,000 being the average amount earned per trip. That's a 350% profit just from the fare to the island alone.
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Now that's Capsuled strategy!