is a reporter who covers the business, culture, and communities of video games, with a focus on marginalized gamers and the quirky, horny culture of video game communities.
Animal Crossing, like Kirby, has come back when it seems like the world needs it most.
Soleil is a cozy game YouTube creator and diehard Animal Crossing fan who has been playing the series since its early days on the GameCube. “When I started playing, my neighbor, who I had a crush on, was playing,” she tells The Verge. She has all the games in the series, including Japanese versions that she can only play with the help of Google Translate, and has clocked over 4,000 hours in New Horizons specifically. “It just became more and more of a cute escape,” she said.
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1 / 3 Some of Soleil’s cute escapes that she made on her island.
With this third update known as “3.0”, Soleil is hoping for things that make the game as robust as its predecessors. Though Soleil says New Horizons is the best game of the bunch, she always felt like it was released unfinished. “Over the years, [Nintendo] introduced patches which have improved gameplay quite a bit, but it still misses some of the mark of what Animal Crossing, up until now, has been,” she said. The new update is two-fold and may bring the game more in line with her initial expectations.
On January 15th, Nintendo will launch a paid Switch 2 update that offers exclusive features like mouse controls and 12-player online co-op. The 3.0 update, which launched a bit early, is free for both Switch and Switch 2 players offering several quality of life enhancements and new features. Players will finally be able to create multiple items at once, the new Slumber Islands offer yet another place to show off player decoration skills, and, perhaps most importantly, there’s now strafing. (Hell yeah!)
But one of the things Soleil is really looking for improvement on is the villagers.ons According to Soleil and others, New Horizon villagers are more passive than their counterparts from previous games. “One of the most common complaints over the years among casual and hardcore players is that the villagers are just kind of lifeless,” she said. New Horizons’ 2.0 update addressed some of those issues, bringing villagers closer to the prickly, opinionated residents from earlier games. “I hope that in 3.0 that they’ve tweaked [that] some more,” Soleil said. Better, ruder villagers aren’t her only wish. “I’m really hoping that they add more dialogue [...] more shop upgrades, and the ability to redesign our buildings like we could in New Leaf.“
But beyond wishes and wants, it’s the little things in 3.0 that excite Soleil the most. “The fairy in a bottle item. Oh my gosh, I literally screamed,” she said. “I loved the Majora’s Mask item in every game, I’m very excited that it’s back.”
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