I cannot begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to hoisting megaphone and bellowing insults at Chops from halfway across my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s Switch 2 Edition, but the whole voice recognition thing is so flakey – so prone to drawing the attention of entirely the wrong villager – there’s liable to be Honaloha-wide revolt if this goes on. I’ve already shoved the damn thing into storage, and with that out the way, I’m not sure there’s enough left of note to warrant the upgrade, even at £4.19.
As you’ve no doubt already heard, New Horizons has been unexpectedly resurrected this week – unexpected in as much as most people had assumed 2021’s 2.0 update would be the last, until Nintendo announced otherwise at the tail-end of last year. This week’s refresh comes in two flavours; a free content patch for everyone, and a paid update for those looking for some extra Switch 2 pizazz. And for your £4.19 you get, as well as that busted megaphone, mouse support, a multiplayer bump to 12 players, built-in GameChat support for voice and video, and a resolution boost – but not a framerate increase.
Which is to say, if you still have a lot of Animal Crossing-playing friends with enjoyable faces who’ve yet to discover they can do party chat on their phones, you’ll probably find a use for the paid upgrade. For everyone else, though, the real action’s in the free patch. So how’s that panning out for me so far? The big addition, of course, is the introduction of a new on-island hotel. And while I still remain highly skeptical it’s possible to build an eight bedroom resort complete with reception area and souvenir shop on a small wooden pier without it immediately collapsing into the sea, I’m willing to let it slide given I’m not a structural engineer.
And as the big new flagship feature in 3.0, it’s… fine. If you’ve already got 2021’s Happy Home Paradise expansion, though, you’ll have pretty much seen and done it all before – each day a couple of new rooms open up and you’re invited to let your inner interior designer run wild, sprucing them up with decor and furniture to match a given theme. Once you’re done, you’re awarded hotel currency to spend on souvenirs (paying employees with money they’re only able to spend in their place of work is precisely the kind of bullshit dystopian capitalism you’d expect from Tom Nook, of course), and eventually a couple of off-island animal tourists will swing by for a fleeting visit to your island. Oh, and you can dictate the outfits they’ll wear during their stay so everyone can spot the interlopers from a mile away.
That’s it. And by rights, I should not be enjoying it this much, having done pretty much exactly the same thing umpteen times over in Happy Home Paradise, but nope – it turns out I’m still far too easily lulled into a state of enrapt serenity whenever I’m asked to match some wallpaper to a couple of chairs. It helps, of course, that it’s all presented with typically lovable Animal Crossing flair – from the catchy muzaak in the hotel lobby to the three generations of kappa who run it all. But really, it’s not the hotel but the smaller stuff in 3.0 that’s been keeping me locked in so far, with Nintendo taking the opportunity to fix some of New Horizons’ lingering irritations.
The ability to craft multiple items at once is welcome, for instance – especially if, like me, your sudden design whims tend toward the dramatic (why, yes, I absolutely do need to replace all 50 of my green fence posts with black ones immediately, thank you). And similarly, the fact that crafting now pulls materials from storage and not just your personal inventory cuts down on a tonne of faff. And speaking of storage, the hoarders among us will delight at the increased inventory space – not that I’ve been able to take advantage of it yet, given Tom Nook is charging the equivalent of a large London house for a bigger wardrobe.
Meanwhile, the new communal island-building feature, which lets a bunch of friends (or rather, paying Nintendo Online subscribers) work together to create and decorate a bespoke dreamspace is nice, if perhaps – depending on the number of Animal Crossing fans in your life – a little niche. Elsewhere, Resetti’s new island clean-up business is handy but expensive, and the option to complete crafting requests to earn more hotel points is… well, it is. By far my favourite new feature, though (ignoring the endearingly silly Lego furniture and the Zelda/Splatoon unlocks I can’t access because all my amiibo are up in the loft) is the button that lets you hop an inch off the floor. It’s been suggested it’s intended to make landscaping easier by centring you back on the building grid, but I’ve mostly been using it to vibrate adorably on the spot so far.
If any picture’s building in your head from all this, it’s probably – correctly – that New Horizon’s 3.0 release and Switch 2 counterpart are far from essential updates. These likely aren’t going to drag you back in for another couple of hundred hours; rather they’re mostly nice-to-haves for the hardest of the hardcore and for those Switch 2 owners new to the whole thing. And four years after major development seemingly wrapped, that’s probably both expected and fine – but whether it’s fine to the tune of £4.19, only you can decide. What all this has done, though, is give me a nudge to stick my head in again, and you know what? It’s lovely to be back, ticking off a few missing fish and kicking back for a few minutes each day – I’d genuinely forgotten how nice a place Animal Crossing is to be. Am I annoyed I can’t reliably swear at Chops from halfway across my island? A little bit, maybe. But there’s always the old-fashioned way.
