| Animal Crossing: New Horizons | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a social simulation game by Nintendo that recently got a Switch 2 port. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your money.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review Overview
What is Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a 3D social simulation game by Nintendo that was originally released back in early 2020, but has since received a Switch 2 port along with additional features. Set on an island in dire need of caretaking, New Horizons puts players in the shoes of an Island Representative trying to spruce up its deserted hills, unkempt forests, and cluttered beaches.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons features:
⚫︎ Customizable island, character, villagers, and home
⚫︎ Real-time updates, events, and progression
⚫︎ Casual social gameplay
⚫︎ Switch 2 Mouse Controls and Mic function
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 eShop |
 eShop |
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| $59.99 | $64.99 |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Mouse Controls Make Designing a Breeze |
Update 3.0 Does More Heavy Lifting Graphics Are Barely Any Better Really Didn’t Need a Switch 2 Port |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Story - 7/10
New Horizon’s story has always been yours to tell, barring a few necessary checkpoints all islands have in common, and it's quite a relaxed and rewarding one. This isn’t unique to this game, as the entire AC series has been about telling your own story. I just think the one for New Horizons is far less engaging due to the mostly isolated nature of your island and the low-stakes storytelling.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Gameplay - 8/10
Though repetitive, the gameplay is vastly rewarding and very customizable to the player’s experience at almost every level. The Switch 2 port, in particular, expands this customizability tenfold, but does little to make the rest of the original experience any different from what it was.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Visuals - 8/10
This game carries Nintendo’s signature polished 3D design and sanitized look, made wild and interesting by the game’s noticeably more natural setting. The AC style hasn’t changed much from previous iterations apart from the fidelity, with the Switch 2 port being the best it’s looked in a while, but not by much. Overall, a great, if unnecessary, look.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Audio - 10/10
New Horizons is positively thrumming with musical cues, addicting sound effects, and stim-worthy dialogue from your villagers (even if they can only babble in response). K.K. Slider’s song is worth sprucing up your island more, and the leitmotif of the main theme permeates every surface. It’s a complete auditory experience that can be good separately from the gameplay, if need be.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Value for Money - 8/10
Value through sheer gameplay density is New Horizons’ game, and it is good at it. From the routines you form through its real-time progression to the collectathons it has you going on every 5 minutes, this game will have your time by the horns before you know it. For a AAA price, that’s more than good, that’s downright amazing! This is just a port, though, so it takes a hit to its value nonetheless.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Overall Score - 82/100
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is good, or rather, it was good already the first time around. Though this doesn’t stop the Switch 2 port from getting a good score, one must be aware that it doesn’t do so through the new features that came with the next-gen console. Expect not much more than the original if you’re returning, and a great time if you’re not.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review | Needlessly Crossing Over to a New Generation
There’s no understating the effect Animal Crossing: New Horizons had on the public back when it first released in 2020. Far from the unassuming social simulator with cutesy animals everyone expected it to be, its birth was given chorus by the quarantine restrictions at the time. It would’ve been a great game nonetheless, but it turned out to be just what the doctor ordered for millions stuck indoors for days at a time.
It’s been more than half a decade and a whole generation of consoles since, and New Horizons reenters the market, floating not on the bated breath of a captive audience, but on the benefit of a few years’ worth of feedback. Coinciding with its Switch 2 release is its massive 3.0 update, promising new content for everyone to go with its next-gen port.
So what has become of this quarantine darling’s second debut? Did it reach such heights as it did before? Quite simply, no. The next-gen console is welcome, but its necessity is questionable at best, and downright unworthy at worst. Evidently, riding your own coattails doesn’t make good business, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
Returning to That Affordable Islander Life
Before we get into the trenches of what’s new, let’s establish what the game is for the uninitiated, or those who only have a passing understanding of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. New Horizons was first released in 2020 for the first Nintendo Switch, and is currently the latest entry in Nintendo’s longstanding Animal Crossing series.
Designed to be a casual and slow-paced experience, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a social simulation game, where the goal of each playthrough is to live your life however you want among cute animal villagers.
For New Horizons in particular, you opt to live on an uninhabited island along with a couple of other aspiring homeowners as a part of Tom Nook’s latest real estate endeavor. You’re loaned a bunch of bells (that’s money in this game), and you’re paying that loan back as you gather up resources, craft items, and resell them right back to Nook himself.
Pretty part and parcel for an Animal Crossing game, down to the rent repayment and unpaid municipal labor. What makes this newest entry unique is your more rural setting and greater emphasis on collection and decoration over interaction.
It’s the kind of game where the journey is more important than the destination; the experience of bringing your island up to snuff is the goal of the entire thing, and how you make that happen is completely up to you. Whether you choose to craft and resell until you’re rich, collect rare critters and specimens for the museum, or just play the stock market (yes, really), what matters is you live the island life you want at your own pace.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about what new bells and whistles this Switch 2 rerelease brings with it, because there are quite a few, and not all of them even come from the console itself.
New Bells and Whistles from the Switch 2
Let’s start with the elephant in the room, and no, I don’t mean one of the villagers. New Horizons is a rerelease, so there’s nothing new to say about its most predominant features and mechanics outside of what the Switch 2 provides it. At least that’s what I’d say if the Switch 2 release didn’t coincide with the massive 3.0 update Nintendo teased a few months back.
There’s something new for old and new players to appreciate in this package, so let’s start with the latter and highlight what Switch 2 exclusive improvements and features I’ve encountered so far. First off, graphics and framerate. The Switch 2 is the newer model, so naturally, it’s more powerful than its predecessor by an order of magnitude, and that much is visible with AC: NH, though "using the whole Switch 2" will require more effort than you might expect.
This is because New Horizons is, at its core, a social simulation game where the most bombastic, graphically demanding thing that can happen is purely dependent on your decoration skills. Basically, the game looks great on the Switch 2, that’s just not entirely surprising considering how undemanding the original version was to begin with.
Sure, the Switch had rougher edges for the 3D models and had fewer frames, and the Switch 2 fixes both of those quite well. That’s good, but a new port should offer more than that. Buying a whole new console and the same game the second time should be more worthwhile than a high-def upgrade.
Don’t worry, though, the Switch 2 port also brings with it new mechanics to go with the expected graphical upgrade, and it has everything to do with the Switch 2’s new mouse control and mic functions.
You’re not exactly directing your villager through point-and-click as if this were an RTS, but the new mouse controls do allow you a greater degree of precision for certain decorating tasks, such as with the customizable patterns. You can also use mouse controls to move things around while editing your house and decor, so there’s no blundering about anymore after every renovation.
There’s also the megaphone item, which utilizes the Switch 2’s built-in microphone. This new item can be bought at Nook's Cranny for a decent amount of bells and can let you call out to your villagers in-game using your real-life voice. Niche, perhaps, but definitely unique.
Overall, the Switch 2 release isn’t completely unjustified and makes use of everything the new model brings. I could argue that this situation is "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut" levels of overkill, considering how little firepower the game initially needed, and that seems appropriate enough as my playthrough comes to a close. Never once did the game being on Switch 2 become a huge deal. Niche new features can only take a port so far, and with what little New Horizons has offered, I’m left wanting more
Fortunately for us, the port didn’t come alone, as a certain long-awaited update finally improves the player experience by a lot—not that the Switch 2 can take credit for that.
The Switch 2 Isn’t to Thank for These Improvements
Moving on to what else the game offers with its latest port, there’s the long-awaited Update 3.0, which applies to both versions of the game. Although most of what the update offers is reserved for developed islands, such as mid-to-endgame content, there are a few quality-of-life improvements added that make the early game more bearable.
These changes mostly have to do with crafting. The game used to require you to build everything one at a time, which isn’t too bad if a recipe made 10 of the object at a time, like with fences. But what if the hot item at Nook’s Cranny was a Toy Block Bookshelf, and you’re planning to cash in with all your wood?
Say you wanna sell 20 or so of them, you’ll need to go through the crafting animation 20 times for the Toy Wood Block component, then 20 more times for the bookshelf. With the new update, you can now build items in bulk, so long as you have the materials for them, straight from the crafting menu with just a few extra button presses.
It’s a small thing, but it makes a massive difference for us who like to craft everything on our island and admire our handiwork.
Speaking of crafting, it’s been streamlined another way, too! You can now craft using materials from your house’s storage. No need to clutter your inventory with materials anymore, just stow them away and craft to your heart’s content! This pairs well with the bulk crafting functionality, letting you make tens of tables at a time using your house’s own storage.
Building structures got a major quality-of-life improvement as well, since moving stuff around can now be done tile-by-tile for those with very specific visions for their island. Now is the best time for decorators and pack rats to return to their island and put those inventories to great use, especially since you’re not limited to the confines of reality in this update anymore.
Speaking of transcending reality, Update 3.0 also brings with it something that goes past the waking world. Drift slowly and gently into slumber and visit the lands of other players directly using Luna’s bed and the Dream Islands.
Visit the Islands of your Dreams, or Show Off Your Own!
Whether you’re looking for something to inspire your next island remodelling or looking to show others the fruit of your labor for the past couple of weeks, the new Dream Islands are what you’re looking for.
Accessible via Luna’s Bed, a special piece of furniture you’ll get in the mail once your house is up and running, you can either save your current island for public perusal or just straight jump into someone else’s.
This is different from the usual island-hopping you can do because, unlike the islands you visit via Dodo Codes, these ones are just for sightseeing. The Dream Islands are static snapshots that the original player allowed for public viewing, and may not even reflect the island as it is now. Nothing is interactable, at least not to the same extent as a normal island, but everything can be beheld as much as you want.
The same goes for whatever you make public, so make that island shine, because people will want to see it in their dreams now. The only downside I can see is that this function requires extra expenditure in the form of an NSO subscription, but you should be playing New Horizons with that anyway.
As Great as it Was, This Port Wasn’t Necessary
Overall, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is as great a game as it ever was. All those years ago, it had the boon of a captive audience, but that’s not to put down how good a game it is on its own, with its satisfying gameplay, rewarding real-time progression, and charming visuals and sounds.
That said, the Switch 2 edition is by no means a major improvement. A minor update’s worth of new things to do does not a whole new port make, and neither does a minor graphics update. But though it’s unnecessary, at least it’s not hard to justify. At its current price, whether you’re upgrading to the new edition or buying it full price, it’s very much worth the bells. Just make sure you’ve got the turnips to make it happen.
Is Animal Crossing: New Horizons Worth It?
Worth the Bells Either Way
Animal Crossing: New Horizons comes in at a shockingly decent (at least in today’s gaming landscape) AAA price of $64.99. If you already have the original and are buying the upgrade pack, then that cost is whittled down to $5.99 for you.
Either way, very much worth the time, money, and creative effort you put into it. The playtime alone gives the game great value for money spent; just make sure you can also shell out for Nintendo Switch Online for the full experience.
| eShop |
eShop |
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| $59.99 | $64.99 |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons [Switch 2] FAQ
How Do I Unlock Resetti in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
To avail Resetti’s services, players must have the 3.0 update downloaded and have the upgraded Guest Services building unlocked. Players can then ask Isabelle for Resetti’s service.
How Do I Unlock the Resort Hotel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
To unlock the Resort Hotel building, players must have a three-star rating for their island and a fully-upgraded Museum art wing. Once these prerequisites are fulfilled, the Resort Hotel will begin construction on the player’s pier.
How Do I Unlock Mouse Controls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
Mouse controls are only usable for specific interactions on the Switch 2 edition of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, specifically designing custom patterns, writing custom messages on the bulletin board, and moving furniture.
To activate mouse controls, simply detach the Joy-Con 2 controllers from your Switch 2.
Where Do I Get the Megaphone in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
The megaphone can be purchased from Nook’s Cranny once the store has been fully constructed.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons Product Information
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| Title | ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 20, 2020 (Switch) January 15, 2026 (Switch 2) |
| Developer | Nintendo |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Genre | Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1-8 |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E |
| Official Website | Animal Crossing: New Horizons Official Website |
