Animal Crossing has become a beloved and best-selling Nintendo franchise, and with the release of New Horizons, the series has become bigger than ever. However, I can’t help but look back at the games that preceded it, especially New Leaf, and long for the series to return to its golden age. New Horizons is a great game, but it lacks the content and replayability that New Leaf had even at its launch in 2013.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is now 11-years-old, and now is a good time to look back on the game that forever changed the series. New Leaf added many new features to the series and improved the core gameplay loop by giving players complete control of their town. This, along with the vast amount of content and the major Welcome Amiibo update makes this, in my opinion, the definitive Animal Crossing game.
Turning a New Leaf
New Leaf was a breath of fresh air for the franchise. In prior Animal Crossing games, you were limited in what you could do with your town. Since Tortimer was the mayor, you didn’t really have much control over what was happening in the town. There were still events that happened and you had a little control over things in the town, but for the most part, you didn’t have a say in the town’s day-to-day events. All you can do is just live your life in game day-by-day. Interact with your villagers, talk to the myriad of special characters, and of course, pay off your debts. Each game in the series made major contributions to the franchise overall, but it started getting repetitive. New Leaf, however, changes the formula. Now you are the mayor, which changed the overall progression and gameplay loop for the better.Â
As mayor, there are several new abilities that you have. Firstly, there are four different ordinances that you can enact that will change certain things about the town. From keeping your town beautiful to making stores stay open later, the player can choose how they want the town to operate. Secondly, and most importantly, New Leaf added Public Works Projects, allowing players to raise money to build different structures. Each structure is different in function and can affect the town in a variety of ways. Deciding on what projects to build and considering their effects gives the player a lot to consider and ultimately makes the game more interesting to play.
There were great inclusions, such as StreetPass functionality (specifically with the Happy Home Showcase), Tortimer’s Island, and dream addresses. All of these features gave players a variety of ways to hang out with other players and show off their towns, something that I severely miss in New Horizons. I loved going to the island and collecting the different bugs there. I also really miss the Happy Home Showcase. I loved seeing other player’s houses and seeing the creativity that was contained within each of them.
A wide array of content
New Leaf also has quite an array of content, even compared to New Horizons. Like with every Animal Crossing game, there’s a huge plethora of items. Many different and unique furniture sets, plenty of clothes, and a variety of special items from online events and specific locations in the game, such as the island or the museum. The different variety of tools also returned in New Leaf. Trying to collect all of the gold and silver tools is a nice challenge and something that I sorely miss in New Horizons. While the gold tools are still present, the silver tools are noticeably absent, which I find lame.
Along with content, there are plenty of features in the game that I also miss. There’s smaller stuff, such as being able to customize the exterior of your house and town hall, the numerous badges that you can collect, or going to Club LOL to learn the various emotions. The biggest feature that I miss, though, is the various shops in the game. After removing the city from City Folk, New Leaf added a new Main Street where all the shops now reside. There are plenty of shops to unlock and upgrade. From the Dream Suite to Kicks to Club LOL, unlocking everything on Main Street gave the game a nice system of progression. New Horizons also has a progression system, but after a month, it feels like there’s not much left to do. There just isn’t much to work towards after unlocking terraforming. In New Leaf, there’s always more to work towards. Unlocking and building all of the shops on Main Street can take a while, especially T&T Emporium and Katrina’s Fortune Teller shop. I enjoyed building up my Main Street and watching it grow, which I severely miss in New Horizons.
On top of the base game content, some post-launch updates added even more content. In the game, there are fortune cookies that you can buy that will give you a variety of exclusive items (or will give you a random, worthless item). In a post-launch update, however, more fortunes were added. Some of the prizes that could be won included the 3DS and Wii U. These items would’ve been cool decorative pieces in and of themselves, but both the 3DS and Wii U can be used to play two different mini-games. The Wii U allows you to play Desert Island Escape while the 3DS allows you to play Animal Crossing Puzzle League. These fun little side modes also give cool rewards, specifically neat Nintendo items you can decorate with. It’s a minor thing, but it’s the small things that really make New Leaf shine.
Those new items came as a part of a much larger update — the Welcome Amiibo update, which was released in November of 2016. This update added quite a few features to the game, on top of a plethora of new items. The magic lantern is at the center of this update, allowing players to scan in Amiibo to invite new villagers to their town. Several villagers missing in New Leaf were added to the game along with new villagers, including new Splatoon-themed villagers, Zelda-themed villagers, and even some Sanrio crossover villagers. It was interesting to see and even be able to invite these villagers to your town.
There’s the Campground, which was a whole new area added in the Welcome Amiibo update. Players could find different villagers and special NPCs alike parked in RV’s. Players could enter these RVs to talk to the villager, order items found inside the RV, and even invite the villager to town. Players could also talk to Harvey, the Campground keeper, and could buy items exclusive to the Campground. This update also added town initiatives, allowing players to collect MEOW coupons, which could be redeemed for a variety of rewards. Interior decorating was also heavily revamped, introducing several features first seen in Happy Home Designer, along with adding more storage space. On top of everything the base game already offered, the Welcome Amiibo update adds so much more to the game, giving players even more things to collect and objectives to work toward.
Not a perfect game
New Leaf does have its fair share of problems. For starters, the graphics aren’t great. They were fine for the time, but looking back at it now, it leaves a lot to be desired. There are also quite a few quality-of-life issues that make this game a little hard to come back to. Not being able to place furniture outside is very limiting. As much as I like the Public Works Projects, being able to place whatever you want outside is so much nicer. Another feature New Horizons has over New Leaf is the ability to jump over rivers using the vaulting pole. It made traversing your island much easier than in New Leaf.
Interior decorating was also a pain when New Leaf first came out. While the Welcome Amiibo update improved this with increased storage and Happy Home Designer’s decoration, storage and decorating without these was abominable. You have three pages of storage between all dressers and closets. Along with that, you had to manually place and move every item one space at a time. While this isn’t a problem in the modern-day, it was definitely an annoyance back in the day.
Why it’s the best of the series
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is not a perfect game, but every game in the series has its issues, and I think New Leaf’s pros outweigh its cons. There is a lot of content to work through, and at times it can feel tedious, but there’s always a goal to work towards. Most of the other games in the series start to become repetitive after a short time, but New Leaf always continues to stay fresh for me. I hope the next Animal Crossing game will bring back some of the features from New Leaf and add in the quality-of-life improvements from New Horizons to make the ultimate Animal Crossing game.
New Leaf is a pretty easy game to find, so if you find a copy, I highly recommend giving it a try. There’s plenty of fun to be had, and even though the game has its issues, it’s still phenomenal.
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