The announcement of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update has pulled many former players back into conversation, along with a flood of strong opinions. Much of the debate focuses on the update’s heavy emphasis on decoration, prompting some to argue the franchise is increasingly little more than a dollhouse simulator.
As someone who’s been playing Animal Crossing for years and lurking on fan forums since I was a child, I find it surprising to hear claims that New Horizons suddenly turned the series into a decorating game. Decorating has always been a substantial part of the formula.
Players once created extra characters in New Leaf just to get more pattern slots, swapped furniture to complete sets, and poured thousands of bells into public works projects—benches, clocks and other trinkets—to give towns personality. Those activities have long been a core appeal. That said, decorating has never been the whole story, and New Horizons hasn’t erased the other facets of the experience.
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A common critique isn’t merely that there’s more decoration, but that those additions supposedly pushed out the life-simulation systems that once gave the games structure—leaving players with little progression and bland NPCs.
I recently started a fresh island on a Nintendo Switch 2, and in those first hours I’ve been reminded how much progression still exists. I’m back in the early grind: minimal storage, no Harv’s shops, no Kapp’n voyages, and only today I found my first crop seeds. Those milestones feel meaningful again.
For veterans with hundreds of hours, many unlockables do become distant memories. But Animal Crossing has always been about choosing your own goals. In older entries, once I’d paid off debts, maxed upgrades, and donated every specimen, the incentive to return could evaporate.
Progress used to be dominated by bells. I remember late nights farming beetles on Tortimer Island to bankroll Main Street additions. New Horizons shifts some of that focus: materials, crafting recipes, and individual creativity now provide satisfying milestones. Collecting every DIY and cooking recipe is a real accomplishment, and you can add decorative touches without dropping tens of thousands of bells on a public works project.
I’ll admit I miss the pricklier villagers from some older titles, but nostalgia can blur reality: New Leaf’s characters were charming, yes, but also repetitive—more like in-game prompts than deeply varied personalities at times. New Horizons initially felt similarly repetitive to me, but the 2.0 update has increased dialogue variety, and the issue wanes as relationships grow.
Another complaint I’ve noticed is that earlier entries had an element of unpredictability—villagers could move or place houses in awkward spots, and town layouts felt more immutable—which some players valued for its harsher consequences. Apparently, making the game gentler is a crime to certain fans.
To test whether New Horizons really departs from the series’ original intent, I revisited interviews with Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami from the franchise’s early days. They framed the original concept as something that resisted a single label: a space for players to communicate and connect through play. Creating and trading furniture was explicitly envisioned as a way to bring players together.
Nogami noted that their gameplay concepts grew from the central idea of connecting players, and Eguchi highlighted different player motivations: some collect furniture, some fish, and others enjoy designing to share. My reading of those comments is clear—Animal Crossing was never meant to be confined to a single genre, and community-driven creativity was baked in from the start.
That creative sharing is arguably stronger now: New Horizons gives players countless avenues to express themselves and trade those creations with others. That doesn’t eliminate the series’ other strengths, though there are genuine shortcomings. I miss New Leaf’s minigames; Slumber Island introduces a fresh way to play cooperatively, but it isn’t a full substitute. The absence of Nook store upgrades, Gracie, and Brewster’s coffee-making and gyroid storage features are all legitimate losses.
Still, it’s a stretch to call New Horizons an imposter that has abandoned everything that made Animal Crossing meaningful. The essentials remain: charming animal neighbors, satisfying discoveries, the joy of shaping a shared space, and the ways it encourages connection—enough inspiration for me to come back and write about it.
Source: Polygon
