The lack of portability really hurt the staying power of this entry in the series for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed what few novelties it brought to the table and it's still an Animal Crossing game at heart, it just wasn't meaningfully distinguishable from its much more convenient prequel and sequel.
I have a lot of nostalgia for this game and it's honestly very special to me. With that being said there just isn't a lot of content in this game and it will get boring quickly (and I mean this when compared to other Animal Crossing games). The city was a nice touch but not quite enough. This game has a lot of charm though
it's animal crossing, the staple mechanics'll never be bad so i cannot rate it any less, but the soundtrack is strangely the thing that kept throwing me off because it's the same as wild world's (with different instruments). this is a really subjective point, but it's strange, even with more updated instrumentation the very composition of wild world's soundtracks make me expect something a little smaller/minimal than a (comparatively) high framerate console edition (and the original compositions suit it really well!), but i'll put this down to association from years of playing wild world really lol. do also agree with the grass mechanics that the ground itself doesn't look as lovely, haven't played enough to determine if this really is the point where the dialogue went downhill but i've got my suspicions (!). not to mention how difficult i find adjusting to the wii compared to a standard controller for this specific kind of game, but again it's a subjective one. boy, this is a whole lot of complaining for an animal crossing game- well other than the grass the graphics are fantastically charming as always and fit right into the cosy visuals of the game for me, especially indoors, as always each object feels lovingly rendered - plus this game began pro patterns! definitely worth visiting on a tour of the older games especially for charm, but I'm not sure how well it'll age as an example of the series in terms of exemplifying its gameplay decades down the line.