the main selling point of animal crossing shouldn't be that it's a building simulator, it should be the interactions you have with the villagers and getting to experience seasonal events alongside them. this game has a very pretty exterior that might charm someone into buying it but when you open it up and look inside it's got absolutely nothing to actually do. the updates that it got were kind of fun to experience in real time (i got this game at launch originally) but years later they added nothing besides gyroids. like i can't remember a single thing that was added besides gyroids, which should've been there from the beginning?

yeah, the cities people are able to build in this are kind of cool, but it really just spits in the original spirit of animal crossing as a "small town social simulator". if you can control everything about your residents' lives like WHERE THEIR HOUSE GOES and they never do anything besides saying the same four passive and genial lines (the A and B personality subtypes do little to mitigate how stale villagers have become) then what reason is there to really play this

most irritatingly of all, this is the first game in the series that allows you to choose your skin tone (and hair texture) instead of just tanning during the summer so i can't even really be like "pick up the original or new leaf instead" because a lot of people like the ability to actually play as themselves. thank you nintendo for delivering a completely mediocre product with features that people have wanted for years so they're forced to play it anyways

tl;dr: this game is literally just the phrase "why does studio ghibli food look so good" and a whole bunch of air.

if you didn't buy it during the pandemic when people were actually excited to play it, then keep in mind that you will be burning 60 dollars. the best way to preserve your enjoyment is to not speed through the progression because believe me there is very little to actually do when you're done with that

i miss my boyfriend who's really handsome and swedish and i wish we could go to each other's islands but i can't and that's partially why i am so angry while writing this review

i don't really play dating sims that are just straight romance and not some insane subplot on the side (like hatoful boyfriend), but i did like this one for what it was! mostly the gender presentation options i appreciated. i hate being boxed into getting called MANLY and HANDSOME just because i'm playing as a male character, but i also don't exactly want to straight up be a girl...

i'm sad to report though that i'm not the target audience for this and probably will not be going back to it in order to get a different ending. i picked the responses that were most in character for what i'd say and even then the dialogue took me into places that i was just like "...ok" at pretty much. (which bums me out because i hate to leave him sad but oh well)

i'm not really into the "babygirl malewife" thing or the game's sense of humor in general outside of that trope, but if that's you then i'd probably recommend this i guess? he's pretty likeable and reminded me a lot of my real-life boyfriend.

actually i think that's my biggest issue, i just kept thinking about talking to my boyfriend the entire time and i have an unfortunate personality where i get really sour at the idea of talking to people other than him ... ... ... and that of course has nothing to do with the game and is just my problem

tl;dr: cute game, nice artwork, i wasn't the target audience but still had fun with it, it's free so you've nothing to lose

i started playing on android in about 2020, moved to nintendo switch, and then dropped it (almost) indefinitely when i ended up inevitably getting bored. it's a grindy dress-up simulator that happens to also have a really beautiful story about environmental destruction if you pay close attention

the social functions are better than i've seen in most video games. it's heavy on consent - you can't even see people's avatars without them agreeing to let you look at them. but like any other social video game i'd recommend playing it with people you already know, because the playerbase skews pretty young and not only that, it ends up being kind of clique-y and therefore lonely. if you find someone who's willing to talk to a complete stranger chances are they're really fucking weird and might harass you in some way (been there, dealt with that)

... also the in-app purchases are kind of insanely priced. it's like 14 dollars for a little accessory on your character and if you don't buy it, it's gone. this game would be really magical if the developers didn't need to price things like that due to the state of the game industry. this wouldn't be as much of an issue if there were more things to do besides customizing your avatar.

despite all the negative stuff i have to say about it the game's charm heavily outweighs my criticisms. even on a lower-end device it still manages to be really pretty and any bugs that happen (that don't result in the player taking damage, but those get patched out quickly anyways) just end up being funny

(also honestly its popularity with kids is something i'm fine with because it's slow paced and isn't designed around being an overstimulating slot machine. i just wish the chat filter was at least a bit better)

edited out some redundant bits because i got really bad about mindlessly rambling in this one

This is only rated highly in comparison to other gacha games. Playing this game when you don't like gachas is like going to a 5 star bakery when you hate pastries. To reword: It's only a good video game in its niche.

The card artworks are really pretty, the characters are fully-fledged and compelling even if you're just in it for the Vocaloids, and the rhythm game aspect is easy to understand while still being relatively challenging. To top it off there's no uncomfortable waifubait interactions; rather, the player isn't a character in the story at all, which is something that I appreciate.

If you spent hours laying in your bed listening to Nashimoto-P as a teenager or are currently a teenager doing that and MOST IMPORTANTLY, you already like gacha rhythm games - please play this. It's not overrated.

this is very clearly hoyoverse's moneymaker for projects they care more about (like the honkai games)

not only that it's extremely time-consuming for very little reward. so many things you can only farm on specific days of the week or once a real life week with atrocious drop-rates. important lore for characters is revealed through limited-time events that you CANNOT replay, so you're either playing until you inevitably get burnt out... or you're missing information on units that you're supposed to care enough about in order to spend real-life money on to C6 and R5.

when it's good, it's pretty good, but you have to ask yourself "is this really that worth it when i can find more interesting stories and more compelling characters in different games".

tl;dr: if you haven't been playing since 2020-2021, then it's really really not worth getting into now if you don't plan on spending money