burnt out on animal crossing already because "log in to do three repetitive chores that often have no payoff" turns out to be quite boring, nevermind the irritating resource management game. if i wanted to play tree chopper 5000 i'd go play something fun like terraria

"animal crossing is all about the little delays" is fine and good for the first three days or so, but after day twenty seven of "wow hi x! i saw you burying bells again! dohoh are you sure you can afford it" yes fuckhead i have fourteen million please go choke on them

rather than allowing you to do anything useful with duplicate diys you are instead largely just going to let them litter your island and dunk your five-star rating because you aren't allowed to put them in storage, or have a list you can share, or anything

meanwhile if you're like me, a person who enjoys burying their town in flowers, you get to wander around pushing a over and over, then having to select your 7th watering can because "tool durability is fun and adds value to our video gaem"

"wuh-oh! there goes my trusty shovel!", i say, having forgotten to stock myself with three replacements, requiring me to stop what i'm doing, run to the store, and drop 2500 on another one, because the alternative is digging through storage to find the mats and making more

Fun

animal crossing new horizons is one of those games that improves a bunch on the core ideas (no more "water every day or everything does", decorating outside, terraforming, less "fuck you *randomly shits a house out in the middle of your park*"

but then absolutely steps back and just says "fuck you" to everything else. more inventory space? good, now you can carry all those duplicate resources and tools for when things inevitably break on you, asshole

what if, rather than being able to share crafting stuff, or like. anything. it's total rng on what happens to poop out, and then you have to dig through garbage to find ones you don't have yet. why not just like. share.

like check this - what if you could share diys by having someone over and /making the thing with them/. no more having to get 20 duplicate cards to give out that immediately explode like a fucking inspector gadget memo

idk animal crossing is one of those games that could be good if it just embraced the "here's everything you can do and we removed all of the frustrating busywork" ideal instead of what it became. every single thing is intended to fuck your flow and interrupt your fun

here's your reward for doing esoteric achievements based largely on random numbers! they require more random numbers to make and then detonate anyway with no real bonus because otherwise The Economy.

it's also really shit how much of the game is designed around forcing you to do multiplayer shit. if you don't have an NSO subscription you're largely just locked into certain varieties of items and you will never see anything else

~island flavors~

every single thing is meant to just be as grating as possible. its fun the first or second time and then it's like yes i'm aware did something i've done 50 times already you can stop pretending this is some monumental achievement worth interrupting the gameplay for

imagine if every time you did something in minecraft you got a game-pausing interruption as it explained your achievement to you. not once, but every. single. time

and the daily horseshit is built into making you like. *feel* like you have to do it. wuh-oh, you lost your streak! no more bonus miles (that are worthless)! oops you missed out on getting a reaction because Number rolled bad, or you didn't check each house for an item card.

like to actually progress:
- hit 6 rocks 8 times
- shake (5 + 10 + 2) trees (or more if you have more)
- search entire beach for card
- check both stores for items
- check every villager's house thrice daily for new cards
- dig up 4-6 fossils
- check store twice for prices

fun!!

if you fail any of these you potentially miss out on progression, and given the absolutely glacial pace of it otherwise it creates a very compelling reason to try to do at least most of this every time

anyway that's all, i hate animal crossing and wish i could quit it but it's almost sort of kind of enjoyable, except that doing anything in it is a slow, agonizing slog that isn't fun

animal crossing's ui is shit, the gameplay loop is shit, there's just little else