Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I don't think Mario Party is "goofy" really. You sure you just don't like the gameplay? The Mario Party games are infamous for being some of the worst Mario spin-off titles.

@VoidofLight I feel like it's hard to compare gameplay of party games with other game genres. Gameplay aspects which are bad in most scenarios can be hilarious as a party games.

In terms of sales, the main mario spinoff sub-franchises are ranked:

1. Kart
2. Party
3. Sports
4. Yoshi
5. RPGs
6. Luigi
7. Wario

Obviously how many millions of games sold doesn't equate to quality, but Party is a well-loved series.

I really do not know if this could be considered an unpopular opinion, but is it bad that I actually like Animal Crossing: New Leaf more over New Horizons?

I still think New Horizons is a good game and definitely one I would recommend, but I felt New Leaf was packed with more content and stuff to do that increased its replayability than New Horizons did, which they quickly stopped updating only after a year.

I think my opinion could also be influenced by how much time I put into New Leaf than New Horizons and maybe some bias, but I don’t know. I really liked the older game more than the newer installment, which is an opinion I almost never have on a video game ever.

@Pastellioli It's a weirdly popular unpopular opinion around here. Personally, I spent a mere 600 hours with ACNH 😆 And I never even tried the boatloads of DLC content. If New Leaf had even more than that, I'm kind of glad I never played it or I wouldn't have survived.

@Pastellioli I enjoy New Leaf more than New Horizons as well. New Horizons and New Leaf have different appeals, since they take fundamentally different directions with the series as a whole. New Leaf is more of a life sim game that is the pinnacle of what the series originally used to be. The world felt like it was living and breathing- and it felt like that while you were the mayor of the town- you didn't have full control over every little thing in said town. Villagers still moved out on their own and flowers died if you didn't water them. You genuinely had punishments for not playing, and it contributed to the world feeling as if it kept going- even if you weren't there.

New Horizons is far more sterilized. Everything revolves around the player. It's a sandbox that you're able to do anything you want with. Don't like a waterfall? Destroy it. Want to redo your rivers? Go for it. Want to raise the entire town up on a cliff? You can do that as well. None of the villagers move out, and nothing restricts you from leaving the game for years at end. After all, everything will be the same as you left it when you come back.

Holidays in New Horizons are the pinnacle of refusing to give consequences to the player. They're impossible to mess up on- and you end up getting rewarded for placing minimal effort into them. In New Leaf, you actually had to build up to them. Learn what your villagers wanted for Toy Day, collect the masks to spook your villagers on Halloween in order to get the lolipops.

New Leaf also has more to unlock and more to spend bells on. New Horizons has far less unless you just care about having your town look nice and decorated.

@Pastellioli that’s a bit complicated to answer so let’s buckle a bit, shall we?
NH’s popularity is really fascinating because it occurred during a certain year whose name rhymes with Dwenty Dwenty, as you can imagine, millions of lovely folks started playing NH. 40 millions, last I checked. Convenient, eh?
Would this be considered unnatural growth? Possibly. But it is completely fascinating and as such I tend to have a softer spot for NL. This, however, isn’t meant to insinuate that NH fans aren’t “real” fans or anything psychotic like that but it is quite funny that once the apocalypse calmed down, the player base begun to slowly dwindle in spite of the slew of updates and support that NH is still getting. Heck, it’s arguably a flagship game with how in your face the adverts for the game is all the effing time. Conveniently inconvenient indeed… not insinuating anything, of course! But I will ask this harmless question: Where did all the NH players go? Bingo?

@Yousef-
I'm still here with ACNH.
I like ACNH most because now I can keep all my villagers when I don't play the game for several days and I don't think the antics from older Animal Crossing (villagers moving out by themself if you don't play the game for one day) is relevant anymore.

I don't think the next AC game is going to sell nearly as well. I think Nintendo knows this though, given the circumstances at play when New Horizons released. Just hope that it doesn't mark a turning point in the series where it becomes more about giving you heavy control rather than being more close to it's roots. The series really needs a shake-up again like New Leaf was, or something that steers it back to the old direction like Paper Mario with TTYD.

@Yousef- The 2020 bump was definitely unnatural, but the game did also sell 10 million copies in the 2022-2024 time period, not much less than the total lifetime sales of new leaf. It likely would have been the best selling animal crossing without the pandemic even though it wouldn't have gotten near the current 45 million.

@VoidofLight I do think I liked the life simulator elements New Leaf had more over the more sandbox elements New Horizons had.

I think some of the restrictions and consequences you mentioned for New Leaf definitely made it feel like a life sim and somewhat like real life to me, not to mention the consequences the game had actually encouraged me to play the game more to prevent them from happening, and I think that New Horizons having little of these consequences is probably what encouraged me to play it less, since you know nothing is going to happen when your away from the game for a while, not to mention the player has control over mostly everything there compared to earlier installments, which is a really weird thing for me to say…not saying the game is better when it’s super restrictive cause that would suck and be unfun, but I also think the game is less fun when there are little consequences in place. I think that the games are more fun if it gives the player an equal balance of control and consequences.

It's weird to think how how much New Horizons sold vs how the fanbase sees that game and how many don't like the direction that, that game took. I haven't played it since the reception has been for the most part of, "play the older ones like New Leaf or the original on GameCube" but I would assume that the pandemic was a major reason for its success.

Also in 2020 for the Switch there wasn't a lot going on that year, mainly ports aside from a few titles so people were looking for a relaxing game to play.

I'm the only the one who think ACNH is the perfect model of Animal Crossing with less restrictions and more control to player.
I have the game, I have absolute power to take control in the game so getting punishment for not playing the game by one day is straight insult to me.
Just let me keep all my villagers and nothing bad happen when I don't play the game for long times.
I don't need the old antics from older Animal Crossing games return.
It's simple, I don't want to lose my villagers nor feeling the losing of someone.
I hate that antics.

@Pastellioli New Leaf was how to give the player power without giving them absolute power over the game, while New Horizons seemed to have been some sort of over-correction due to how many people voiced that they couldn't get into the series due to specific things that they personally disliked about the games. It'll be interesting seeing what direction things go in, but I get a big feeling Animal Crossing is going to be like this for a good while.

@ShonenJump121 The pandemic was a major reason, yeah. At the time a lot of people were more optimistic about the game than they are now, since it was continuing to see updates and tons of "new" content (recycled from the previous games, but new to those who never touched them). When support ended it seems like the consensus online shifted a bit more towards the negative outlook other fans had at the start. Some are only unhappy the updates stopped while others started to realize why the game gave them an off feeling. Some still enjoy the game to this day and sing it's praises constantly.

The online consensus against the changes New Horizons made isn't actually as massive as it seems. Most people who still enjoy the game don't tend to be on online spaces, or if they are- they don't tend to complain and so their words are never put out there on mass. It's more frequent to see people who do complain online- given they're usually the vocal minority. While I hate that I'm one of the few in that minority of people- I hope that the complaints from some of the people online end up shifting the series back a bit to how it used to be- instead of where it's going.

I think the issue is that there are now two seperate parts of the fanbase:

1. People who had played animal crossing before
2. People who started with ACNH

I would argue ACNH is an incredibly good and well made game — there are mild justifiable complaints as any game has, but they are mild. I personally own several hundred Switch games and ACNH is one of precisely 3 I thought deserve a 10/10 rating.

The caveat: Being a very good game does not imply it is fully the same genre of game as previous animal crossing games. It can be good in a different way.
Previous fans partially complain because they are not getting what they want which is fair. I personally feel the same way about BotW — sure, its a good game, but it didn't have a lot of the traditional Zelda aspects I like and expect so I didn't enjoy it as much.

So there really is no contradiction in ACNH being a really good (and good selling) game and a game which gets lots of complaints. I said it above, but I am pretty confident it would have been the best selling animal crossing game even without the pandemic.

@Anti-Matter I'm on your side about villagers leaving. In general I find games which punish you for having real life responsibilities to be stressful and not very fun. ACNH made the game relaxing which I love.

@FishyS The thing about villagers not leaving though is that it makes the game feel like a hostage situation. Like I'm holding my characters there, and that they have no free will to up and leave as they please. It's basically what kept me playing New Leaf as well, since I wanted to keep the villagers that I liked- and it gave me a reason to be attached to them. In New Horizons I barely talk to any of them. I don't even care about any of them. They just feel like shells that populate my island instead of characters I've grown to love or care for.

I felt like New Leaf had a good compromise where the villagers leave- but they aren't gone forever. They come back to shop at times, which I genuinely thought was well done. New Horizons got rid of that as well- much like other things New Leaf did.

The argument about ACNH vs ACNL is never ended.
I personally like ACNH more than ACNL because I have the power of control and less restrictions for not playing the game by one day.
If you don't like ACNH just because of hostage situation of your villagers, go play older Animal Crossing because I don't like to feel the losing of someone. You like to lose someone but I hate it.
The villagers that I choose are mine, I have to keep them all and not letting them go.

@FishyS I am a little surprised a ton of people have shared the same opinion like me on here, cause I would have thought that the new direction New Horizons was taken in was more popular than the previous direction. I have read both here and on other sites that people felt the older direction New Leaf and previous entries had was somewhat stressful, which I can definitely see with, for example, the villager thing everyone is discussing here right now.

I still think New Horizons is a good game, and I am now thinking I maybe did not put enough time into it like I did with New Leaf. I can’t recall the exact hours, but I think I put in maybe around 300-400 hours into New Leaf, with New Horizons only at 50-60 hours. The large amount of time I spent in New Leaf probably made me more used to the life simulator elements and content in that game more than the new direction New Horizons went in, alongside the sandbox elements added in with the life sim elements.

@Yousef- The events that happened at that really unfortunate time did absolutely increase the player base for New Horizons and, I’d maybe say the Animal Crossing series as a whole. Like what @FishyS said, I also do think the game still would have sold like hotcakes even if that pandemic never happened. Of course, maybe not the same numbers as it has right now, but I also think the games that were released on the Switch at that time maybe had something to do with the great success New Horizons attained, as people just wanted a game that was new and relaxing and could help take their mind off of many issues present at the time.

I do think them stopping updates on the game somewhat quickly is what led to how some people (including me) felt toward the game and preferring some of the older installments over it, though it seems to also come from people who were fans of the series beforehand and less from newer players. Now thinking about it, I do think my opinion comes from a small vocal minority, as I haven’t seen a lot of people have this same opinion as me besides some on this thread and a couple of comments on social media posts talking about this game. I still definitely think there are a good amount of people playing New Horizons to this day, even if we do not hear much about the game anymore.

I think even if the updates still kept going, the game would've been just as underwhelming as it is now. It has fundamental issues that not even updates could have fixed. Things revolving around the direction the game took. It's no longer a life sim game. It's just a deco simulator, and that's what it'll probably stay as. It's sad, but I guess not all game series are going to stay the way they used to be. For better or for worse.

ACNH being more sand box and The Sims style is the best thing for me.