At first, Animal Crossing was pretty fun, even somewhat addictive. I liked the townspeople and it was cool to see what furniture would be in the store the next day. However, it didn’t take long before everything just became mind-numbing repetition. Even if you strategize (if you can call it that), it still all boils down to the same daily tasks. Eventually, anything I liked about the game was just worn out of me until it deteriorated into annoyance bordering on resentment.
The main feature of this game that differentiates it from the pack is that it plays in real time. The time of day, day of week, and time of year are all represented in the game. This is a sort of neat feature in theory, but in practice it meant that the game had a schedule that I had to adhere to. If I didn’t want to play on a Sunday morning, then a whole week of playing the turnip market was out of the question. On Saturday nights there is apparently a character that gives out music tracks for the radios – the only way to get them. I can’t confirm it because I’m always busy on Saturday nights. The frustration I got from missing out on parts of the game by virtue of my schedule vastly outweighed the novelty of seeing the trees change color.
Other annoying/frustrating aspects of the game:
- Etremely repetitive, unskipable dialog
- Carbon copy characters
- Clunky menu structure
- Small carrying capacity – forced back-and-forth gameplay
- Menial tasks…ad nauseum
- Unsatisfying reward structure
Playing with friends did allow me to travel to other towns. Like most other things, this started out kind of cool the first time and not really worth it after that. Overall, I probably did put more time into this title then some of my other games, but I don’t recall any of that time being really fun or compelling, and it ended up being such a drag.