The latest entry in Nintendo's Animal Crossing franchise, New Horizons, was released over a year ago for the Nintendo Switch. Since then, the game has seen several updates and events to keep players coming back. However, it hasn't quite been enough to stem complaints from players who consider the game empty in of gameplay, particularly compared to other Animal Crossing games. One of these older titles, Animal Crossing: City Folk, has a couple unique features that could help change this if they were introduced into New Horizons.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has drawn harsh criticism from fans of the series, many of whom feel that the latest title is missing content that has become standard in the Animal Crossing franchise. The relative lack of furniture items is regularly highlighted in player complaints, as is the lack of returning Animal Crossing characters like Brewster. The removal of structures like the café, the observatory and the hair salon have lead many players to believe the game is empty compared to previous games. Online features are a large part of New Horizons, and in the first few months following its release the game had an active online community. However, as its popularity wanes, so does its longevity.
The game has received multiple large updates since its release, and does feature some new mechanics that aren't present in other Animal Crossing games. DIY crafting, in particular, is often emphasized as a main feature in New Horizons. However, even this feels repetitive to lots of fans. Rumors of an island expansion have given some players hope that New Horizons could be seeing significant improvements soon, but thus far the existence of an expansion pack or other big changes hasn't been verified by Nintendo. For the moment, fans can do little but speculate about what features they would like to see added. In particular, these discussions tend to highlight gameplay from previous Animal Crossing titles.
New Horizons Needs A Shopping Plaza
The addition of the shopping plaza in Animal Crossing: City Folk gave players a new area to explore, and the change in scenery did a lot to help the game feel new even after an extended time spent playing it. The city changed frequently, a gameplay mechanic that made it seem dynamic and provided players with incentive to travel there on a daily basis. Many characters had dedicated shops that could be visited regularly. In New Horizons, characters such as Redd and Kicks appear infrequently instead, usually once a week. The city in City Folk also included characters who have thus far not been added back into New Horizons, like Dr. Shrunk.
Another unique mechanic featured in the city was the appearance of different villagers who did not live in the player's town. This gave players a way to talk to some of their favorite characters from previous titles in the series, even if they weren't residents of the village. While New Horizons does allow players to find new villagers by doing mystery island tours, these cost Nook Miles to obtain and can only be done when there's a vacant spot on the player's island. New Horizons could also use this feature to allow players to interact with special characters like Rover more frequently than their current annual appearance in the game.
