Paradise Lost, Paradise Found with New Horizons’ Latest Update BY CHRISTINA LANCELLOTTA

I think any additions to the game were welcomed by the community. I loved the new content and the holidays that were added and while I’m sad to see it was really the last big update for the game, I still think there is a lot of good content they packed into the last update, and I love playing the DLC as a whole different game. These updates were all good for themselves and the game. I argue that they saved the game from being merely mediocre and turned the game into something more worthwhile to play.

It’s been almost two years since Animal Crossing: New Horizons originally released onto the Nintendo Switch gaming system. It had sparked a tone for this new “quarantine” we were going into. Things would be over soon, and we all had this cute game to hold us over until we were out of it. But, as we all know very well now, those few weeks of vacation at home turned out to be a little bit longer than expected. 

I wrote my article for the May 2020 edition of “The Entry” on Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ initial debut, including my opinions on the game as I played it. I had a mostly positive view of the game, with some minor criticisms being towards the lack of content. But nearing the almost two year anniversary of the game, a retrospective on any updates that came to the game between that period of time, as well as any changed opinions from myself and the community, seemed right to write about. Every update will be described and summarized. 

As of March 6th, 2022, I have totaled 340 hours or more of New Horizons gameplay, which I believe puts me in a good position to speak on the content of the game. I talked about the actual gameplay in my other article, so I will refrain from describing most of it unless it has been changed. 

One of the first big updates after May 2020 was the Summer 2020 update. Wave 1 of this update batch added the diving mechanic used in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, allowing you to dive into the ocean with your wetsuit to collect deep sea creatures not obtainable by fishing such as sea urchins, anemones, crabs, and more. It also brought back Pascal, the loveable otter from the previous games who gives you furniture in exchange for his tasty snack. Other than a pirate-themed Gulliver, this didn’t add much else, but it did start the trend of introducing past mechanics into the game. This brought much hope to many players who missed the charm of the past games, both with gameplay mechanics and special characters, that maybe their favorite part will be added into New Horizons. 

This trend of reimplementing previous games’ mechanics and characters was further shown in the second update, called Wave 2. Fireworks Shows were added as a weekly event, adding a fun incentive to logging on later in the night. You could view your colorful sky, and also buy fun toys like balloons, sparklers, fireworks, noisemakers, and more things to play around with. The bigger reintroduction was that of the Dream Suite, with Luna returning as a special character. Here, you could visit other people’s islands without needing them to be online- simply upload your island to the Dream Suite, and other people could come visit it in a “dream”- they run around your island, able to dig things up, interact with your character and villagers, visit the houses, and more. Anything another person does is not saved so you do not have to worry about inviting random people and them messing up your island. And the best thing is you do not have to be online for people to visit. It is the perfect tool for people who want to tour islands on their own.

The Fall Update came at the end of September of 2020. This brought back the holiday of Halloween and the jack-o-lantern host of the event Jack. You can buy candy throughout the month to give to villagers, in exchange for prizes through Jack. Introduced as well were pumpkins- a new type of plant different from flowers. Similarly, there’s different colors you can get, and once planted they go through stages of growth, and become harvestable once mature enough.  They can be used for DIY recipes at this point. 

Shortly after came the Winter update. Brought back were two fall and winter holidays- Turkey Day, the equivalent of Thanksgiving, and Toy Day, the equivalent of Christmas, and their respective special villagers Franklin and Jingle. With Turkey Day, you cook different recipes by collecting ingredients like pumpkins and fish to be able to gain rewards including exclusive furniture.  During Toy Day, you can give toys you buy to villagers and also get rewards from Jingle. There were other holiday-themed limited items added through the Nook Shopping feature. 

The 1.7 update reintroduced Pave and the Festivale holiday, bringing back catching heathers with your net to receive exclusive furniture items. Seasonal items through Nook Shopping were also added for respective in person holidays. Another small update was the Super Mario update, which added in many furniture items purchasable in the game that represent Super Mario games and characters. 

Sanrio-themed items and Sanrio villagers based on Sanrio characters were added once again to the game. They are only obtainable by scanning their respective amiibo cards, which you can purchase online or at certain stores. As someone who bought these cards, it is worth it if you are a fan of Sanrio characters, or just someone who likes cute furniture in general. The cards were only around $6 for the whole pack and you can use them in the past game, New Leaf, as well. In addition, the Custom Designs Portal was revamped: The Custom Design Pro Editor+ could be accessible from the player’s Nookphone, making a feature so you can access it anywhere in your game, and adding a few new design choices. This upgraded feature is another trend we will see in future updates- allowing starter applications in the game to be upgraded to further levels.

Updates 1.10 and 1.11 in the beginning of 2021 were short, enabling the events from 2020 and adding some new furniture items. It was around here where fans were speculating there would be a major update soon. Code was shown to include mentions of popular coffee-brewing character Brewster, the introduction of new plants, new furniture, and more. It wasn’t expected to take until the end of 2021 to arrive though. But god, when it finally came, it seemed like the game was finally feeling complete. 

The aptly titled 2.0 version released in early November 2021. Brewster was indeed reintroduced in the game. While “The Roost” is not a super important part of the game, it does allow many other special characters not before shown to be scanned in via Amiibo card. along with many other special characters thanks to Harv’s island gaining a spot for peddling merchants you can see in other parts of the game. Gyroids, the little singing creatures from previous games, are also reintroduced. Island ordinances are reintroduced to give your town an independent feel to it. Group stretching is even added with motion controls in the Town Plaza, so your villagers can do a little exercise. Villagers can visit your home unannounced and hang out with you, another feature added from the previous games. There are many more quality of life updates, some are upgrades to services you have and some are added to the game immediately for everyone. And 16 new villagers were added too- 8 are completely new, and 8 were from the Gamecube and N64 versions of Animal Crossing that were not introduced again until this point.

The biggest part of this update in size was the announcement of the paid DLC/add-on game of Happy Home Paradise. Similarly to the New Leaf spin-off game Happy Home Designer, you are tasked with designing villagers’ houses from the outside in, matching their preferences in your design and making sure they are all happy. This version is directly in the game though, accessible through the airport. You can buy furniture that gets sent directly to your island as well through the exclusive island archipelago currency, obtainable every time you design a house or other facility. As well as that, you can get exclusive building and decorating tips that were not in the game previously like decorating with ceiling items and painting fences. 

This update was a marvelous inclusion to the game. It added tons of content that accomplished players will enjoy and new players will appreciate through their playthrough. But it came with a certain tagline: it was the “Last Free Update”. Not only is that confusing with the word “Free”, but the “last” one. IT turns out they will not be doing any more big updates other than bug fixes. So that seems to be it for updates.

At the beginning of the game, there did not seem to be enough content included. Many players complained about how little there was to do after the big story was done. While all these updates really added a lot of content to make the game replayable, many ask if it’s actually a finished game. While Nintendo claims that there is enough content for the game to be completed, players still seem as though there is not enough to be worth the price tag of a full game. Considering the game was already delayed for a while before it was initially released, the little content it initially had was fair to criticize. And developing through the beginning of the pandemic to add the rest of the updates probably was why the updates were slow. But I also think it’s ok to criticize the leads of the game for not implementing enough content and forcing it to come out uncompleted when none of the other games had a major problem like this. While there could have been problems with developing the new textures and lighting for the game as well, there should have still been ample time through when it was first teased to when it was actually released for it to be developed more. 

Overall though, I think any additions to the game were welcomed by the community. I loved the new content and the holidays that were added and while I’m sad to see it was really the last big update for the game, I still think there is a lot of good content they packed into the last update, and I love playing the DLC as a whole different game. These updates were all good for themselves and the game. I argue that they saved the game from being merely mediocre and turned the game into something more worthwhile to play.