Best Animal Crossing Game
With Animal Crossing: New Horizons coming in March, many of us have been looking back on the serene life sim series as we gear up for the next chapter on Switch. Animal Crossing has a habit of taking over your life, becoming a part of your daily routine like doing your teeth or walking the dog. Consequently, it etches itself into your brain and, perhaps more than any other game series, remembering your first Animal Crossing brings to mind non-gaming life memories and milestones, too.
Which Animal Crossing game is the best, then? The fact that these games embed themselves in your life makes that a very tough question indeed. Each entry invariably brings quality of life improvements over the previous one, but the basic premise of starting a new life surrounded by friendly animal citizens remains unchanged since Dōbutsu no Mori (or ‘Animal Forest’) on Nintendo 64 in Japan nearly 20 years ago. You don’t play Animal Crossing like you do other games – you live with it, almost like a person. And just like people, the newer ones might be quicker off the mark or more attractive, but that doesn’t overwrite our treasured memories with the old ‘uns.
Therefore, you can appreciate that putting together a ranked list of Animal Crossing games is tough and, perhaps more than any other, your personal ranking may be vastly different to the one below. We understand that, but we still want to celebrate the series with one of our All Time lists. We’ve added spin-offs in the list below but haven’t included apps like Wii U’s Animal Crossing Plaza or DSi’s clock and calculator, nor have we included the delightful Animal Crossing content in games like Nintendo Land, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
That being said, not every game is perfect. Here is my definitive ranking of Animal Crossing games, from best to worst. Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo DS) In my personal opinion, this is the best Animal Crossing game of the bunch. They added lots of little features, while keeping the point of the game simple. New Horizons is the first Animal Crossing game to truly embrace customization, presenting players with a veritable canvas that they can color however they please. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has come in second on Polygon’s Game of the Year list. The Nintendo game came at exactly the right time, but has changed a lot as the pandemic continues.
Where will Animal Crossing: New Horizons rank among the games below? There’s not long to wait until we find out, but until then sit down and relax with our picks of the best Animal Crossing games ever…
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo
We begin with a spin-off experience built around using the adorable Animal Crossing amiibo in a board game. This was also the first series entry to benefit from high definition, but the disappointment of Animal Crossing fans was palpable when they realised that Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was to be the series’ only entry on Wii U. We (and everyone else who played it) described it as ‘slow and plodding’ in our review, which for a series that isn’t exactly famous for its fast-paced gameplay is a pretty damning criticism.
Nearly all of the mini games quickly became repetitive and probably the best thing to merit Amiibo Festival’s existence is the accompanying series of amiibo. For that we are thankful and if you see the Amiibo Festival pack for under a tenner, it may be worth picking up for the Isabelle and Digby figures that came bundled. Otherwise, even die-hard fans should probably concentrate their time and effort elsewhere. A shame.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
A 2015 3DS spin-off that followed the incredibly popular New Leaf, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer Designer drilled down on the collecting and organising aspects of the series and casts you as interior designer for your village. For series fans it’s a charming, if basic, little game that introduced some decent UI additions what found their way into New Leaf via the Welcome Amiibo update.
As we said in our review, Happy Home Designer is “likeable but largely forgettable”; a pleasant spin-off for anybody who really liked going to town with their furniture and interior decorating, but certainly no substitute for the proper full-fat experience.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo
In terms of presentation, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp translates the AC experience to mobile phones very well, and even if you don’t spend any bells there’s still plenty to investigate and enjoy here. The game now has a paid membership service and the various monetisation mechanics in the game might rub series veterans the wrong way, but as f2p mobile experiences, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp isn’t a bad one, even if the ‘pay-to-accelerate’ mechanics leave an unsavoury taste in the mouth compared to the mainline games. There’s a reason we Animal Crossing fans are busting to get our hands on the ‘proper’ Switch game, but as a free experience on a non-console platform, Pocket Camp translates the look and feel of the series well enough.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
Subtitled Let’s Go to the City! outside North America, 2008’s Animal Crossing: City Folk enabled up to four players to take their own house in a single village and introduced a city for players to visit. It might not have been the bustling MMO metropolis some fans wished it was but it was a fun addition in a game which arguably played things a bit too safe to be top-tier. City Folks’ compatibility with the Wii’s ill-fated room-wide microphone peripheral Wii Speak demonstrated that Nintendo really wanted you to be playing City Folk as a family. There’s nothing wrong with that, but solo players obviously couldn’t enjoy the novel interactions of sharing a town and leaving each other messages, and the game ended up feeling like an upscaled version of Wild World except lacking any serious innovation, not to mention the convenience of portability.
Not bad – far from it – but it added little to the base formula and it was hard to be locked to your TV after the joys of a handheld village.
Best Animal Crossing Game Reddit
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
The original game debuted on Nintendo 64 in Japan after beginning life as a 64DD title. When that console died on its derrière, Nintendo shifted the game to a standard N64 cartridge and launched it in Japan in April 2001 under the title Dōbutsu no Mori. Before the year was out a GameCube port hit shelves with extra features and following a mammoth localisation effort it hit US store shelves in September 2002 (we Europeans had to wait another two years for the game to arrive – we don’t miss those days!).
Best Animal Crossing Game Reddit
This first game set the template for the series so wonderfully that although the GameCube original is basic by the series’ modern standards, the fundamentals are still utterly charming nearly two decades on. Throw in GBA connectivity and unlockable NES games and you can understand when aficionados claim it never got better than the original Animal Crossing.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
Taking the base foundation and adding sweet, sweet portability, Animal Crossing: Wild World was the perfect game on the perfect platform. Having your village with you on-the-go made a world of difference to many players and enabled you to check turnip prices in bed, water your plants on your way to work, or make sure your favourite animal friend wasn’t packing their bags on your lunch break. Portability made the world accessible in a whole new way and opened up its joys to the masses who embraced the Nintendo DS.
With intuitive use of the touch screen and the day-night cycle reflected in the sky permanently visible on the top screen, this is where many people began their love affair with the series. Subsequent entries might have polished its systems and sanded off Wild World’s rough edges, but the magic of the series shone brightly on DS and when someone mentions Animal Crossing, it’s the title theme of this game which pops into our mind. Shocking, then, that there’s another entry we’d rather play…
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
Animal Crossing: New Leaf took everything from its handheld predecessor and polished it to the Nth degree. Rather than start you off under the yoke of Tom Nook, New Leaf made you mayor of the town and gave you municipal power to mould the place to your liking like never before. These changes were facilitated by your delightful doggy assistant Isabelle, a tireless public servant on hand to take care of the day-to-day office tasks while you go about your important mayoral duties like beach-combing, fishing, shaking trees and bothering bees.
Taking advantage of 3DS’ SpotPass feature, you could nose around the houses of players you passed on the street and order their furniture if a piece took your fancy. It’s also easy to forget the system’s patented 3D effect which made the world more enticing than ever. It might not have been HD, but New Leaf was a fine looking game and with the 3D slider set to max, it had never been easier to get lost in your little town. Nearly 8 years on, the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch has a lot of work to do if it is going to surpass this.
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Disagree with the list above? We’ve found that the first Animal Crossing game you play tends to leave an indelible impression even if subsequent entries are ‘better’, so let us know below which of the above games is your personal favourite, macmoo.
Enjoyed this lovely list? Here are more classic series ranked for you:
Over the next week, we will be posting features for what we've nominated to be the best games of 2020. Then, on December 17, we will crown one of the nominees as GameSpot's Best Game of 2020, so join us as we celebrate these 10 games on the road to the big announcement. Be sure to check out our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best Games of 2020 hub.
It's become cliche at this point to remark on Animal Crossing: New Horizons' fortuitous timing, how it arrived at exactly the right moment to ease us through the first few, uncertain months of a world-changing pandemic. And yet, it's impossible to view the game without also looking at the circumstances surrounding its release. More than any other title that launched this year, Animal Crossing felt like a panacea to 2020. Just as the COVID-19 virus began surging uncontrollably and forced many parts of the world into lockdown, suddenly shattering daily norms and routines that we had all taken for granted, here came this wholesome, candy-colored bit of escapism--this digital playpen where your next-door neighbor is a fitness-minded penguin and your biggest concern is whether the sofa you just purchased matches the rest of the decor in your living room.
Given these circumstances, it's easy to see why Animal Crossing became such an immediate, inescapable hit, particularly during the first half of the year. As an unprecedented pandemic upended our collective sense of normalcy, the game offered a welcome bit of respite, a chance to socialize with friends virtually and revel in the mundanity of daily life that was now being denied to us. Of course, this in itself is hardly novel; many other games also serve as a virtual social space where you can hang out and pass time with friends. But what made Animal Crossing hit differently is its emphasis on the smaller, unceremonious aspects of daily activities: the joy of checking out what new items are in stock at the store; the small thrill of seeing town hall swap out its fall decorations for Christmas lights; the satisfaction of reeling in a new type of fish not yet on display in the museum.
What gives these little moments their resonance is the same thing that has set Animal Crossing apart from other life sims since the series' inception: its real-time clock. Animal Crossing unfolds according to the date and time set in your system, so it follows a much more measured rhythm than other games, even within its genre. Days and seasons pass in the game just as they do in real life, while stores open and close at specific hours. Pop into your village at 10 PM, for instance, and you'll miss your chance to peruse that day's wares, forcing you to come back the next day (unless you don't have any scruples about setting your system's clock back).
New Horizons is a warm hug of a game that has helped many a player find digital refuge from the relentless torrent of this year's woes.
This deliberate pace extends into how slowly the game metes out its features. When you first arrive on your island, you'll find no amenities beyond Tom Nook's makeshift resident services tent. As you return each day, however, your island home will gradually blossom; new villagers will move in and new facilities will slowly open up, which in turn will give you access to a richer array of things to do and see. In a time when many video games are all too eager to indulge in instant gratification, the boldest thing a game can ask you to do is wait--and as Animal Crossing illustrates, there's value in taking things day by day.
What truly elevates New Horizons are all the smart ways it builds upon the series' formula. While past games have always offered some degree of customization, New Horizons is the first to give you free rein over every decision. Not only can you now place furniture and other items outdoors, but you can also handpick the exact spot where other villagers move in and even edit the very landscape itself. New Horizons is the first Animal Crossing game to truly embrace customization, presenting players with a veritable canvas that they can color however they please. This makes the experience much more personal and rewarding, and watching your island home gradually develop into a proper village feels immensely gratifying in a way few other games can replicate.
© Provided by Gamespot No Caption ProvidedCustomization isn't the only area where New Horizons improves upon its predecessors. Nintendo has made numerous other tweaks and refinements to the gameplay, both large and small. The ability to dig up and replant trees, for instance, is a welcome boon, as is the increased inventory space you have in your pockets and at your house. Tying these disparate elements together are the new crafting and Nook Miles systems. The former lets you fashion furniture, clothing, and other items out of the various materials you can gather around your island, while the latter doles out reward points for all kinds of actions, from chatting up a certain number of villagers each day to even getting stung by wasps. Thanks to these systems, every item in the game--even seemingly useless ones like weeds and trash that you can fish up out of the river--and every action you take has a purpose, feeding back into a satisfying gameplay loop.
More than anything, though, what makes New Horizons a special game is its irresistible charm. Watching a villager plop down in front of a tree to read a book or break out into a spontaneous song in the town plaza--these little moments are endlessly endearing and never cease to put a smile on your face. New Horizons is a warm hug of a game that has helped many a player find digital refuge from the relentless torrent of this year's woes. There have been many excellent games over the past 12 months, but none of them will be as inextricably associated with 2020 as New Horizons.