While completely outclassed by its sequels nowadays, this is still a landmark title, both in the GameCubes' library and Nintendo's history. The premise of this game is simple, you have bought a house and moved to a village of animals. Pay off your debts and live your life.

It is such a simple premise, but incredibly addictive. The freedom that it allows the player was quite unheard of for its time. Of course, you had games like Harvest Moon that gave you farming simulators, but this felt much more simplistic and stripped down. You could collect fossils, grow flowers, make friends with the neighbours, decorate your house, and buy new clothes for your character.

All of this and more was at your own pace, but that is where I found the biggest flaw of this game. This game is based around a clock, so it felt like after a certain amount of playtime I was forcing myself to keep finding things to do. This is steeped into the design as well, since if you buy out the shop, then that's it for the day, or once you find all the fossils in the ground for the day then you can't find any more. Unlike future titles, which have more content to supplement this, its lack of content causes burnout to happen much quicker.

This is still a great game, but it's hard to come back to given how much each sequel has improved upon it. Give it a shot if you have the chance to play it, but you would be better off playing New Horizons or New Leaf if those are available to you.