Whenever I think of this game I always think of when I was in middle school and would play it all the time with a friend at the time. Summer nights of us having “sleepovers” by just keeping our 3DSes turned on while in each other’s worlds. Playing on Kapp’n’s Island and spending hours collecting bugs and sharks. All the personalities and the ways I’d imagine my villagers speaking and what they thought of me.
For me this is a game of nostalgia and still the best one to date. I get emotional thinking back to it all. It’s just one of those games that I would open find a log and just listen to the music as well.
Aside from that it’s more animal crossing for the most part with a few more things added for better or worse depending on who you ask but i think a lot of people can relate that this game is so well remembered because it just had many things to experience.
That’s what this game has that New Horizons is missing, the experience, the shock, just these moments that you remember so fondly. To me those are so rare in the newer game. Maybe it’s just that I’ve grown up but whenever I boot up my old village I don’t think that’s it. There’s just something here that isn’t in New Horizons.