Summary
- Animal Crossing has evolved over time, with some elements getting lost in the process of updating the series.
- Modern entries like New Horizons lack Wild World's atmosphere and unique villager personalities.
- Recent Animal Crossing games have more features, but additions don't replace what's missing. Has the series already peaked?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Although the franchise has remained consistent in a lot of core regards over the years, it's also undergone some substantial shifts. The gameplay options found in the original entry are all familiar, but they ultimately pale in comparison to everything offered by the time Animal Crossing: New Leaf rolled around for the 3DS.
Games are a lot more than just features, however, and certain elements ended up getting left by the wayside over the years. My first exposure to the series was with Animal Crossing: Wild World for the Nintendo DS, and it's easy to position the game as rudimentary compared to more modern entries. Nostalgia certainly plays some part in the fact that Wild World is still my favorite Animal Crossing game today, but I think there's a little more to it than that, and I wish I felt more confident that a future Animal Crossing game could someday claim its throne.
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Wild World's Atmosphere Made Me Love Animal Crossing
It's Not About How Much There Is To Do
Playing Animal Crossing: Wild World for the first time is implanted in my brain in a way that very few gaming experiences are. The product of a particularly exciting expedition to Toys "R" Us, it was an unusually decadent treat compared to the average third-party DS games that came in at cheaper prices. I played it for the first time as my family continued onward to my grandfather's lakeside cabin, and all the winding mountain roads in the world couldn't shake my attention from the game.
Going into Wild World, I had a misconception that the player took on mayoral capacities in the game, something that New Leaf later happened to fulfill. Figuring out the truth could have come as a serious blow, but any disappointment that Wild World afforded no such power had no chance to set in. What hooked me so fast was the game's atmosphere, which felt rich in a way that most things packed into a couple of three-inch screens usually aren't.
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Wild World is very fundamentally comforting, but not in the way that most cozy games today try to be. It's a touch moodier, with a landscape that's a bit dirty and villagers that can be a bit mean. The color palette leans toward darker shades, a substantial difference from the pastels of New Horizons. With the wider access to Animal Crossing that I can now enjoy, it's easy to see the origin of Wild World's atmosphere in its GameCube predecessor, but the continuity gets a lot shakier when tracing a line from Wild World to New Leaf and New Horizons.
Wild World's music also remains a common favorite among the scores for the series, although none of the games really drop the ball in this regard.
Making Animal Crossing Nice Sacrifices A Lot
I Miss The Personality Of The Older Games
The thing that I always focus on is the dialogue, which started to move in a different direction with the Wii entry Animal Crossing: City Folk. Each successive game after Wild World made the villagers slightly nicer than before, doubling down on the cozy pleasantries of the franchise while scrubbing away at the more sardonic edges. This might not be a net negative for everyone, but it has the effect of heavily flattening villager personalities. By the time New Horizons rolled around, "cranky" villagers were barely any ruder than "normal" ones, taking away a lot of individual flair.
Animal Crossing Villagers Used To Be Real Jerks (& Way More Fun)
Villagers used to have more personality and charm during conversations in the original Animal Crossing games, but now they're repetitive and boring.
Maybe it has everything to do with what media I happened to experience growing up, but a lot of things that set their sights on being cozy end up feeling a bit sickly sweet to me. I'm very capable of loving simple, comforting stories and worlds, from Tove Jansson's Moomin works to just about any fantasy that feels like The Fellowship of the Ring at the start. I need atmosphere, though — just a little dash of weirdness, or a few characters who aren't only there to be welcoming. Wild World excelled there, and modern Animal Crossing doesn't.
This shift in direction definitely isn't isolated to the Animal Crossing games, and the course of the 2000s and 2010s ended up sanding away the weirder edges of a lot of Nintendo franchises. The odds of picking up one of the company's modern first-party titles and finding something with an atmosphere to rival Super Mario 64, Majora's Mask, or the original Pikmin are generally low, and not just thanks to the shine of modern graphics. Super Mario Wonder 's flights of fancy proved that this course doesn't have to stay unaltered, but it's in the minority.
I'm Glad People Love Modern Animal Crossing
There's Still A Lot To Appreciate In New Horizons
The new games obviously aren't objective downgrades, and there's a reason why New Leaf and New Horizons have so many ardent fans. Setting aside the value of interesting conversations, there's more to do in them, and even the basic tasks can feel more seamless thanks to tweaks like item stacking. Anyone looking to curate the perfect town will find a framework to it in modern Animal Crossing, whereas Wild World more or less lets the chips fall where they may.
Animal Crossing's Kind Community Has Shown Me How Well Fans Understand The True Meaning Of The Game
Redditors show that New Horizons players are a kind and welcoming bunch — something the community continues to show me every day.
Although I'd love it if New Leaf's fulfillment of my childhood mayoral fantasy satisfied me enough to make up for its change in tone, it's never really managed to. New Horizons certainly scratched a social itch shortly after the pandemic hit, but as my friends drifted away, I did too. I can't bring myself to care about terraforming in the way that I care about chatting with villagers or basking in a quiet evening, and I can go back to Wild World today and have a better time in those latter regards.
I'm glad that many people do adore modern Animal Crossing, and New Leaf is the game that I most often see people crown as the best. At the same time, I do fear that the celebration of the modern style (common criticism of some New Horizons changes notwithstanding) means that there won't ever be a new Animal Crossing game that can rival my ion for Wild World. If that is what it is, I've mostly made my peace with it, but I'd love to be surprised by seeing another Animal Crossing that I can truly adore again.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
- Released
- November 23, 2005
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo
- Franchise
- Animal Crossing
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii U
