Animal Crossing New Horizons: First Thoughts

Welcome back, everyone. I know things have been mainly quiet on the page, but we’ve been working on a lot of pleasure writing with Fanfics and such. Also with not being able to get out and with how hard it is to get things that aren’t essential, there hasn’t really been much new stuff for us to review. We should have some TV reviews coming out soon though as we’ve been doing some binge-watching so if you’re interested in Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Picard, or Legacies, and Vampire Diaries then stay tuned for our thoughts on those series.

So this week, we decided to try out Best Buy’s curbside pickup so that we could get our son the new Animal Crossing New Horizons video game. While he is down with his grandparents this week for the first time since the COVID crisis hit full force, I started the game up yesterday. Now, after 2 days of playing, I just want to go and give my first thoughts of the game. So here we go!

So again and again, I kept seeing articles about Animal Crossing and there was only one thing I could think “Damn that looks cute!” So eventually I decided to look at a gameplay video. What I saw for the beginning of the game had my wife and I decided that this was indeed a game for us to get. You see, our son is Autistic and has learning difficulties and we HomeSchool him so when I saw cute animals like Tom, Tommy, and Timmy Nook and the possible villagers, I just knew my son would LOVE the game just for the visuals. Then seeing the speech bubbles that don’t really progress until you hit a button I knew this was a way to help teach him to read.

So last night I ended up playing it for several hours. I got my island set up and I got enough Nook Miles to pay off the initial fees pretty darned fast. I ended up getting initial villagers that are a workout obsessed penguin and what I can assume is a phoenix because of her plumage and how she tends to call me Sparky.

For activities, it’s VERY grindy but to be honest I haven’t minded a second of it. Right away I went and totally weeded…de-weeded the small part of the island we started on. See you end up with a nice sized island but there are places you can’t get to at first. First, some places are blocked by rivers then later other places are blocked by cliffs it seems. I’m not sure if this is the same on all Islands or not. Some other activities I have been able to do is to pick fruit, catch bugs, and go fishing. As you can see from the picture below with all the aquariums I may have a bit of a fishing problem, but then again can you ever really call fishing a problem?

Real quick I ended up catching what was needed to get a new villager, an Owl named Blathers to come to the island. He is a funny little owl that loves fish and absolutely HATES bugs with a passion. However, he wants to open a museum and as such you give him fish, bugs, and eventually fossils that he can display. In a day or two from now, I will have an open museum to start tossing my catches into however he only seems to take one of each species so far. So right now one of each species goes into a cage and everything else is getting sold. This is a good thing since I already upgraded my initial tent to a one-room house which is costing me 93,000 bells (the currency of this game along with Nook Miles). In one day between this and collecting and selling seashells from the beach I have already paid down half my house! They also are wanting to set up a real store instead of working out of a tent and guess who gets to find the materials for that? That’s right YOU get to do it. Yeah, you’re basically the island’s slave but if you don’t mind the grinding then it’s not a big deal. For me, fighting high blood pressure and anxiety and depression, getting to play a relaxing game of grinding fishing and bug catching is quite relaxing.

There are only a few things I’m finding frustrating right now with the game. I have a distinct lack of Iron on my island and a lot of things need iron in construction. To get more I have to spend Nook Miles to get travel vouchers and hope the islands I go to have a good amount of rocks, which on my first try did not pan out. This sucks as I need 30 iron pieces to upgrade to the shop. The other downside is my wife wants to play this as well but with the way this game plays the only way she’ll be able to have her own island will be to buy a second switch and second copy of the game. If she were to create a game on the same console, as me she would just become a new settler on MY island and would have no say over how fast or slow the construction and story would progress.

All in all I have been enjoying the game so far and I can’t wait to share more of it with you later. So before we head off just a few little tips and tricks I’ve learned.

-Hold B and you’ll run faster everywhere

-So far Blathers is only taking one of everything so feel free to sell duplicates for quick money

-Make sure to collect a bunch of branches as fishing rods and such break often

-If you want to freak Blathers out take him as many insects as you can find

-Tool Ring is a great purchase

-Always have a net ready when shaking trees incase a wasp nest falls out

-Keep a stock of meds incase you get stung by wasps

-When looking for Iron do NOT eat fruit beforehand.

-Pressing Left or Right on the d-pad cycles your tools swiftly (Might need tool ring to work)

-Pressing Down on the d-pad puts your current tool away

-Upgrade to a house as quick as you can to get storage space

-Rain brings out rare fish

-With your net out hold down A to sneak up on skittish bugs

-Learn your fishing sounds! A blip is just a nibble so you don’t want to pull it up till you hear a louder bloop

This page has some other awesome tips! https://www.cnet.com/how-to/19-best-animal-crossing-new-horizons-tips-fake-art-befriending-villagers-and-more/