This Mario Party style virtual board game is likely to garner mixed reactions at best from your friendly gatherings. The rules are simple enough. You and up to three friends compete to collect the most happy points and bells by landing on event spaces that will either increase or decrease your totals of both. It's not a very exciting process as all you're really doing is rolling the dice and reading a little mini-story about something your character did, rather than actually getting to do anything yourself. Occasionally, a familiar face from the series will show up and add new scenarios that only last for a single turn, but this ultimately doesn't do much to liven up the gameplay as they just amount to more text to scroll through.

To make matters worse, physically playing it is an awkward experience. For whatever reason the entire thing uses only one controller. Which means you either pass the GamePad around every turn or let a single person hold onto it and roll for everybody, effectively limiting the amount of interactivity the rest will have with the game even further. Then there are the Amiibo themselves, which ARE essential as you can't even make it past the start screen without one. Instead of being able to push a button you're forced to scan the figurines each round in order to move and it's incredibly clunky.

It's also worth noting that if you don't have enough of the toys to go around, there are generic in-game avatars that can be used. However, the player(s) stuck with one are at a severe disadvantage as those who get an Amiibo are awarded a bonus happy point each time the dice is rolled. So if you want to keep your sessions fair you'll have to invest in a full set of four.

There are mini-games, but they're weirdly detatched from the main mode. They also require you to have Animal Crossing Amiibo cards (a separate thing from the figures), which add new characters to the world and play an integral role in controlling these side-diversions. Essentially making them even more mechanically frustrating than the core offering is. It's their cheap, disposable nature that's the real issue though. I simply have no interest in touching them again after trying them out once.

Amiibo Festival is a dull, poorly designed cashgrab built around selling you outside accessories. I did enjoy things like the "stalk market" that sees you buying and reselling turnips against rapidly fluctuating prices before they expire, as it's the only part of the game that allows for any sort of strategy. I could even see myself returning for the grind of unlocking new features, such as the option to build new paths on the board. Still, I would be very leery of breaking this out at any sort of get together where I wasn't 100% positive everyone there enjoyed it, lest I run the risk of boring them. Which is about as bad as it can get for a party game.

4.5/10

This is an example of Nintendo at their highest point of hubris. The Wii U was essentially dead by 2015. I was using it more to play old Wii games than new Wii U games at this point in its lifespan. A new Animal Crossing game might not have been able to save the console, but it at least could have showed they were still listening. Instead, they released an awful Mario Party ripoff that you needed separate toys to even play. The results were obvious. My local Walmart had unsold stock of this game well into 2019. They couldn't move it even marked down to 10 dollars. Nobody wanted this, or even asked for this. It was predatory in its practices, but because it was Nintendo it didn't get the flack it deserved. This is one Wii U game that Nintendo hasn't ported to Switch and it will likely stay that way. For good reason. A black stain on the reputation of an otherwise great series.

As a lifelong Animal Crossing fan, I have to say this is the most boring game I have ever played. It's not like an infuriating boring to me, it's more like staring at the screen long enough will send me into a trance where I will do anything to not think about or interact with the game. It should be classified as torture.

The mini games in New Leaf were more fully fleshed out and had better utilization of the Amiibos than this whole game designed around buying and using them.

This is a cute scam and a waste of everyone's time.