My love for the core concept of Animal Crossing came from the GameCube one. Then, I purchased all the games as they launched. I play randomly any of them in no particular order because I find value in each and every of the activities I can have in my various towns and island, watering flowers, decorating, offering presents, I even write letters just for the sake of writing personal things to a random virtual frog I like, for exemple. That's how casual I can be in those cozy games. It is therapeutic, in a way. Villager dialogues in this particular Wii entry are very funny and well written to me, helping them is fun as I encounter them in my walks, and the town is massive in size, cool for gardening. The easy to access, without hack, fan server Wiimmfi to play online, is its strongest feature, as it is for Mario Kart Wii. City Folk was and still is the most multi-player focused entry in the series by far, to me

Stale isn't strong enough a word. The content recycling is one thing, though disappointing given the years between this & Wild World. But the dialogue looping is inexcusable. The original Animal Crossing & its DS sequel both offered just enough variety in conversations across villagers to keep the game loop working. With your neighbors getting stuck on one damn thing so often in City Folk, the illusion's dispelled.

Then you see how, even with some added content like new holidays & collectibles, the city itself is just a demystified way to access previously event-only features. Sure, it's awesome that I can get my hair done anytime vs. the dumb unlocking method in WW. But why not simply give & tell players a way to get the hairdresser at Nookington's? Then you can stay in the village—you know, the actually relevant setting of the game. Instead of finding better ways to let players unlock & integrate new functions into the village, City Folk took the easy way out, and it's harmed it ever since.

The developers must have realized (or learned through market research) how badly they missed the mark on most players' expectations. New Leaf fixes so many of CF's omissions & questionable decisions. But for all the fun I can still have with this entry, it just has me pining for a WW decompilation so we can get proper content & mechanics mods for it already. I loved this as a kid, but would much rather play the idiosyncratic GC versions or WW for those neat villager hobbies & pictures. Even returning now with cheats & emulation niceties doesn't make a dent in CF's mediocrity.

I haven't even touched on dirt paths, barely improved online, using the pointer for typing, and other exhausting but well-trodden topics. All I can do now is ponder how much worse this could have turned out if not for the core developers' consistency in porting the working bits of GC & WW over. I'm just glad even the most mid of pre-New Horizons entries is still a little fun. (N64 is a glorified prototype, so I'm not counting it here.)

i remember getting this game when i was very little, could never make it off the train station because i didn't know i had to point the wii remote at the screen in order to move 😭😭

years later i eventually returned to it after playing new leaf a lot, wanting to see what i missed out on. turns out, it was a lot! city folk offers a classic experience that i recommend every wii owner to go through for themselves. you'll be wrapped up trying to catch all the fish and bugs, digging up fossils, customizing your house and paying off that goddamn raccoon or whatever he is

for a game called city folk, the city gimmick leaves a lot to be desired. there's definitely a lot of things that can keep you occupied the first few visits, but after a while you start to realize that there's nothing all too important over there.

regardless, city folk delivers on that pure animal crossing charm so many people love it for. marking it as completed because i feel satisfied in what i managed to accomplish in my town over the months i played it. i love this game

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.