Review No. 77 Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 3DS (7+)

Strong Points:
Ability to change a lot of your town
Can have 4 people on one game card to live in the same town
Lots of bugs, fossils and fish to collect and donate to your museum
Online visiting to other towns is fun
People can't spam your place unless you let them come to your town by opening it
Dream suite allows you to visit other towns even if you don't have any friends
Swimming is a nice addition
You can create your own town tune and flag
Graphics are surprisingly good for a 3DS game
Controls are easy to pick up
Gifts can be nice to receive
Ability to send letters with gifts is cool
Quests can be good as you will gain gifts as rewards
Characters have really different personalities even on different games
Awesome accessories

Weak Points:
Some of the characters that already live in the town are really annoying
Place is really small
You have a choice of 4 places and can't change where anything is
New villagers can be annoying on where they choice their house to be
Quest can be repetitive
Voices can be stupid as they say each letter out loud and character voices are dumb as they make no sense

Rating: 92%

In Depth Review:

Release Dates:

Japan: November 8, 2012

Korea: February 7, 2013

North America: June 9, 2013

Europe: June 14, 2013

Australia: June 15, 2013

Controls:

Circle Pad: move character

Circle Pad + B button: run

X: open and close inventory

Circle Pad + A button or stylus button: select (in menus)

Up D-Pad: moves camera to see the sky

Left/Right D-Pad: switch tool

Down D-Pad: put away tool

A: use tool (fishing rod, net)

Y: pick up item and dive when in sea

L + R: take photo

Animal Crossing games have always been great and most importantly addictive. You will find yourself drawn into the lives of these virtual creatures and their lives. This game builds on the already steadfast features of Animal Crossing. Community, friendship, hobbies and most importantly money, of course. But it also adds to this by making you mayor. Yes, finally, you can run your village as you would like it, be it a dystopic nightmare or sprawling orchards. When you are mayor you have the option to either fill your own pocket or help out the town by building public work projects. These projects include things such as Cobblestone Bridges and a bench! That's right, after years of wandering around the village randomly, you can now choose where to sit!

Each town can only feature 30 of these and only one can be fundraised at a time. Lloid is in charge of collecting the money and will stay 24/7 until the right amount is collated. Once donations are complete the project will be fully build at 6AM the next day. Then a celebration will be held which the player can choose to attend.

A new thing in Animal Crossing: New Leaf is ordnances. Ordnances are things that cost 20,000 bells to start and then can be cancelled for free. As a rule, there can only be one ordinance in effect at any time, meaning if the player would like to change it, they will need to first stop the current one in play, however the cost of enacting the new ordinance will still be 20,000 bells. There are four different ones:  Beautiful Town, Early Bird, Night Owl and Wealthy Town. Beautiful Town means villagers are more likely to water flowers, time travelling does not affect town environment, weeds appear less, cockroaches will not appear, plant hybrid are 20% more likely and trash is not an object that can be obtained fishing. Early Bird Town means villagers wake early and shops open early. Night Owl Town means villagers sleep longer hours and shops stay open later. Finally Wealthy Town means shops buy for more bells, there are two premium items at Re-Tails instead of one and medals collected on the island increase.

Two more features added is the ability to go to Tortimers Island. Tortimer, the old mayor, now resides on a tropical island where you can play mini games and get rare fish, bugs and fruit. He also allows you to play mini games with a group of friends. Finally, added on to the bugs and fish from the last games, you can also go swimming and get certain creatures there. Then you can donate these to the museum and look at them to your heart's content.

Conclusion: this game is great and will soon become a part of your daily routine.

See Ya,
Martin
And
Goodbye for now, Harry