Do whatever you like, however you like – that’s the Animal Crossing: New Horizons mantra. There’s no big bad boss to defeat, and no final destination to struggle towards. Instead, New Horizons offers players complete freedom to create and develop their island paradise however they like. Or so it might seem.
There is, in fact, an end goal in New Horizons that requires players adhere to a stringent set of guidelines, and that is achieving the coveted Five Star Rating for your island. To achieve Five Stars, you’ll need to adorn your island with just the right amount of furniture and manmade structures, ensure that you have a specific number of trees, and do a great many other things, too.
Animal Forest
However, I have a big problem with this system and, to put my reservations in context, you first need to understand a little bit of my Animal Crossing history. Looking back, I’ve always loved the rural aesthetic present in previous Animal Crossing games because it mirrors the countryside I grew up in. Living in a tiny rural village no doubt biased me towards woodland, ponds and wildflowers and, whilst you can replicate this look in New Horizons, I soon learned that to achieve a Five Star Rating for my beloved Stoxall I would have to sacrifice a lot of greenery. In short, I was going to have urbanise my island wilderness by adding outdoor decorations to it.
Outdoor decoration and features were introduced in previous Animal Crossing games New Leaf (to an extent), Happy Home Designer and Pocket Camp. It makes sense that this aspect of gameplay would make its way into New Horizons but, in New Leaf, I totally ignored my residents’ desperate pleas to install various outdoor Public Work Projects. Take the fire hydrant for example. Because that kind of item (while undoubtedly important in real life) did not belong in my quaint, rural town, I wasn’t having any of it. The same applied to Happy Home Designer and Pocket Camp – I’d often ignore requests for any significant manmade structures. If it stopped me from progressing, I didn’t care, I was playing how I wanted to play.
But in New Horizons, I somehow found myself desperately wanting the shiny gold watering can and the dainty Lily of the Valley flower that came with achieving a Five Star Rating. I was miffed that I would probably have to sacrifice parts of my green island to get it, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I just got on with it.
Let’s (Not) Go To The City
Oh, how wrong I was. As I tried to bump up my Three Star island to the elusive Five Star Rating, I realised that I’d hugely underestimated the amount of outdoor furniture and urban structures I needed. This led to my quaint little parks and marketplaces quickly becoming clusters of benches, swing sets and misplaced musical instruments. My pristine beaches were soon littered with sun loungers, archways and other junk, and my beautiful woodland had to shrink down to a fraction of its former size. Things soon began to look incredibly cluttered, and yet still the game demanded I lay out more decorations every time I went to Isabelle for an island evaluation.
Maybe if there was an option at the beginning of the game (or during the upgrade of the town hall) in which players could alter the parameters of the Five Star Rating to make it better suit their style, then perhaps I wouldn’t have felt like chasing Five Stars was such a chore. There is a precedent for this. In New Leaf you could dictate the nature of your town, setting in place a singular ordinance that altered village life. Picking the ‘Make My Town Beautiful’ option would promote the growth of flowers, encourage residents to tend to nature and prevent the trash from ending up in the oceans and seas. But where is this feature in New Horizons? Its implementation would have a been a lifesaver for nature lovers like myself!
On top of that, New Horizons doesn’t take into account the quality or artistry of your custom design. Talk to Isabelle and she might tell you that your island lacks appealing scenery, and that the only way to increase your rating score (a hidden metric) is by decorating every inch of the island. Basically, your island doesn’t have to look good, it just has to have enough stuff on it! Additionally, the islands in New Horizons are by no means small, which means that a lot of furniture is needed to satisfy Isabelle’s desire for a ‘fully decorated island.’ Setting out such a strict series of rules means that gameplay shifts towards a more mandatory progression style, and that sharply contradicts the 'play it your way' message of the series.
Back to My Wild World
But eventually, I did get the Five Star Rating and, as great an achievement as it felt, I was not happy. Stoxall was no longer the green paradise complete with a modest shopping district and rustic fishing shack that I’d grown to love. Now, with an assortment of objects strewn haphazardly across the place, my island felt crowded and messy. Things had to change. It was time to rewild my island.
But what is 'Rewilding?' In the real world, rewilding is restoring areas of land to their natural state, usually for reasons of conservation or to reintroduce animal life back into a particular region. For me in New Horizons, it would be the process of tearing down my urban expansions, ditching my cluttered marketplaces, and re-establishing the natural look that Stoxall previously sported.
First, I collected and sold all of my ugly outdoor furniture, then I re-established a giant woodland, and finally, I planted a meadow of hybrid flowers that was even bigger than before. Butterflies and other bugs returned to my wild paradise, and there was much more room for fish in my expanded ponds and rivers. I’ve even been encouraging an undergrowth to form beneath the forested areas of my island by letting a few weeds sprout. You know, just to really grind Isabelle’s gears.
And it feels great! The pressure is off, and I can once again do whatever I want with my island. Looking back, I think that Isabelle’s demands for a perfectly decorated island made me feel as though I was playing New Horizons the wrong way, which grated painfully with a notion that Animal Crossing games have worked so hard to establish – that there is no right way to play.
The only saving grace is that I had the power to transform Stoxall back into my dream rural landscape and, even though my island is back to being a Three Star disappointment in Isabelle’s eyes, I’m finally a happy home designer once again.
Comments 61
The star rating is vastly overrated and totally unnecessary
I simply must develop, pull weeds, decorate outside until there is something interesting in every step you take. Can't have a garden full of LOTV's without 5 stars! It's my dream AC game tbh.
I have a ruins area in mine city. I dont sacrifice my wild area never too. I dont think is ok don't have a wild area. My city is 4stars but because bushes, flowers and fences.
The key for a 5 star rating is...... flowers & lampposts !
Goodluck
It's like the Japanese saying of "The standing nail gets hammered down" has been applied to New Horizons. You have to conform. It took a while to get a 5 star rating, and I lost it twice
This is how I have played the whole time.
I achieved a five-star rating easily by doing what i feel is achieving balance. I think this post overstates things quite a bit.
My Wife put mannequins all over her Island to ensure her rocks landed in the correct place, and it gave her the 5 star rating. I had resigned myself to not getting it on my Island, converting the center portion of my Island into a wilderness, filled with weeds, a few flowers, and a ton of trees. That is when I got my five star rating.
@ManyPockets what do u want a medal?
@Seananigans "I feel like the writer of this article misses the point of Animal Crossing. There IS a right way to play it."
The author says "I've been playing Animal Crossing wrong" in the very title of the piece. Kinda suggests she's already aware that there's an alternative way to play it - a "right" way, if you will - does it not?
@ManyPockets this is the weirdest type of elitism I've seen thus far.
Here was my issue with Isabelle's advice. It changed from interaction to interaction. One minute, it was not enough furniture or decorations, which I found to be silly as every inch of my island was filled with a decoration or three.
The next it was not enough greenery or flowers which felt not possible because my daughter is still bitching me out, to this day, about my planting way too many flowers and trees. I eventually got 5 stars. It just seemed all over the place.
Ultimately, I roughly put the island together I wanted (with inspiration from other designs) and got my 5 stars. And that's really what it comes down to. And even then, I am always finding stuff to tweak
@ManyPockets I mean, it was definitely more loaded than that lol. You started with a dig on "overdeveloped" islands, which implies there is a wrong way to do it. But u deleted it so I guess the world will never know lol
@RebeccaStow97 Well done on the headers!
Hear hear! I've been arguing this point for the longest! Glad to not feel so alone 🙏😄❤️🌲🌳
Welcome to Animal Crossing, the game which gives you the freedom to design your little world specifically to the needs of a deranged dog
You need to have a certain percentage of flowers on your island, then have a decent part of the island decorated with items and paths, but one very important thing is the distinction between placed and dropped items, as you can only have 14 items that are dropped on your Island.
I made some fruit and D.I.Y stalls and dropped fruit and spare D.I.Y cards on them, also dropped some materials like stone clay and iron nuggets, they look cool in their displays but will affect your score negatively if you have too many, plus the game does not care if a dropped item is on a stall or the floor, it treats them both the same.
Once I sorted this out I got the 5 star rating.
My Island is still prett rural, and I have achieved. 5 Star rating, I still have a huge forested areas of all kinds of trees. I just have a few themed areas like Campground, Beach, village, zen and a few villager houses I’ve tried to keep in theme: proper/flower, fun, woodsy, sporty, farm, etc.
I have kept the map on mine the same, I have slightly shortened the rivers but overall it's pretty much the same map, I have pathways all the way round and some nice features, I have also done a little terra forming to create a fossil excavation site and steps to get to Redd's boat easily.
My island really isn’t all that urban and there’s a mess of flowers trying to take over the world! But it’s a 5-star rating....
ETA: I do think there can be a balance found in the game and I’ve worked hard to keep any furniture within a certain aesthetic, avoiding almost all the big things you can get from nook Miles for example, going for more of a small town vibe.
I would love to see more than the one pic of the writers island, LOVE to see what other people have done.
@ManyPockets bruh you deleted the comment, that's no fun.
The first time I even thought about checking the star rating I had four stars. Said I needed more fences so I installed a few and got five stars, which is the last time I thought about it. Have always done what I felt like, which is just dotting stuff that takes my fancy around the original island layout. No interest in relocation, terraforming or anything other than convenience infrastructure. Similar approach to my house, which I’ve got a gold trophy for. Play enough and everything comes your way.
I just got it naturally from trying to make my island the way I wanted.
@Seananigans Agreed. It would be like saying Breath of the Wild lets you "do whatever you want", but then complaining that to beat the game's story, you have to kill Ganon. But you like Ganon and don't want to fight him.
If anything, I'd compliment Animal Crossing on NOT tying the credit roll and sense of "game completion behind the star rating at all. It's there for people who want to adhere to a more stringent set of rules to complete a larger objective, but it's not even vaguely necessary to get virtually everything else out of the game.
I was able to achieve 5 star ratings with minimal outdoor furniture. I made sure each villager house had fencing and one piece of furniture. I put out streams as well because I liked their aesthetic. Other than that, my beaches were mostly bare and I have a ton of trees and flowers and an established path system. Fencing and outdoor lighting go a long way towards satisfying the 5 star requirements. Also remember, you need to have 10 villagers there.
I was always under the impression that you attain the five star rating naturally through gameplay. I discovered I reached it when I decided to actually talk to Isabelle on a whim.
I'm stuck at a 4-star rating because Isabelle keeps telling me that I have an "overabundance of trees" (what?) and that my island looks too rural. And I'm thinking, "Uh, yeah, that's exactly the look I was going for," but the game apparently thinks my aesthetic is "wrong", so I will never get 5-stars. And I don't care.
@Mountain_Man,
My island was at four stars for ages, and to be honest I was very happy with it, but I did want the lily of the valley, which you only get once you reach 5 stars.
Reading this reminded me that I still haven't unlocked terraforming. Now I'm sad.
Getting specific villagers is more important for me than terraforming the island.
@Deltath it's not even stringent tho. I think I hit five stars in about a month without even thinking about it. The game really emphasizes decorating outside, and gives you the tools to make it look however you want. Au natural, Urban, or somewhere in between. You totally don't have to decorate like that, but the game rewards you for pushing that concept to it's full potential.
The right way to play ac is to play it how you want to
I stripped my island down to absolutely nothing but buildings and characters I can't remove. I intended to fix it up, but never got around to it and haven't even checked it in over a month. I wonder what it looks like now?
My island is presently at 3 stars, and I don't really care. I'm too used to the old AC games where your island was nature, not full of random furniture.
I am in same boat as most, I play my island as a good measure of creature comforts/urbanization to nature’s beauty. Seems 5 stars is prestige and that’s all....no unbreakable tools as reward for 5 stars.
@Octane "headers!"
Is that like British slang for getting your own article? I almost had a heart attack when I saw a woman wrote on article on NL. I've been on here nearly every day for 11-12 years and female contributors have been very few and far between. Like she may be the first. Though there have probably been more and my sieve mind just can't recall. PS has had a few, usually to write about JRPG before Shogun showed up, but not in a few years.
I forgot all about the stars since I got 3 and got KK to show up. The game is called New Horizons, not City Builder. My island is like 50% fruit trees, 25% flowers, and each house has a patio. No fences or roads. There are no cars in this game, why do I need a road? And fences are to keep pet dogs in, haven't seen a pet dog on my island either.
The only things my island needs to be complete are Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins.
I had a blast with this game, put over 200 hours in it in only a couple months...
And haven't touched it since early June. I just burned out in a big way.
The island gets worse in every way from your arrival on.
What was once an island paradise becomes more and more like your f****d up real world with every "addition", be it alive or inanimate.
Mine is still quite a rural treasure and it's parked at a 4 star rating. Given what you said and I assumed as much for the full rating I gave up on it as it's not worth the wasted time, resources and poodle whining for weeks/months on end to get such a cheap trophy prize that won't even sustain itself unless I keep up the cluttered mess.
@rjejr No, the headers of the paragraphs.
I got 5 stars completely by accident without trying lmao. Rain got my flowers growing out of control, weeds pretty sell sort themselves out and after I got enough cash I stopped bothering planting money trees so I never ran into the issue of having too many trees.
This article gives voice to a sentiment that I’m sure many of us have been harbouring. New Horizons’ scope for customisation is one of its strongest features, and should in theory make it even easier to build the island of your dreams, but Isabelle’s dictatorial requests and narrow aesthetic vision ultimately force players down a fairly rigid path. Thank you for writing this.
@Anti-Matter Same here. Plus I already have it to where I like it.
Yeah the rating system annoys me and doesn't recognise simplicity. My island still looks like a remote island...with a few houses and simple buildings added, yes. But still a remote paradise. My own house has fencing around it, and it's now possible to get to anywhere on the island without needing the vaulting pole or ladders, but that's pretty much it.
The flowers spread like crazy on my clifftops, and I mainly just let them do their own thing unless they get in the way. At some point in the future, I might play the hybrid flower game, but I'm happy allowing them to hybridise mostly naturally for now. I have no paths, although I might add some at some point. I do remove all the weeds, personally. I like my island. I also like a few of my friend's islands which have been decorated with completely different visions and styles to mines.
Yeah sure. At some point, I might go down the route of outdoor decoration...but I'd prefer to do that because I want to, not because I need to.
Such a good article - and it really highlights how AC needs to evolve from it's junk based Star system.
And I struggled with not enough greenery to get the rating.
Before you do any major construction, throw furniture and flowers all over your island, get watering can recipe, leave it for a few days to spaw lilies or just clean it up while you build up your real island (you may find that this takes longer than you thought) Bam, you get all the cool stuff without sacrificing your aesthetic.
Thank you for the article, well written! I completely agree and I went through the same "clutter" process.
However, though I did not like the excess of "stuff" lying around, I challenged myself to put it together in a way that looked good to me. That challenge gave me an island I really like. And, that would not have happened if I was content with 4 stars.
That said, I love the idea of "rewilding" and I think I will try it. (maybe I will even let some of my neighbors leave!
Thanks for the great article!
I must say, I prefer the more "un-urban" look myself. I also feel a little sad when I have to remove trees. Even when I re-arrange them into a more organised line, it feels wierd.
Having said that, I like collecting and placing outdoor items whilst working out how to display them in a decent looking manner. I also like how the other villagers interact with them (using the microphone to sing for example).
So I am about "halfway with" the author here only.
Interesting read from an AC series enthusiast though.
@Octane Aaaah, those headers. Well yeah, those were good too. Not as good as breaking the glass ceiling on NL but they were good too. 😎
I didn't even know about the Lily of the Valley. Time to get my island back to a 5-star -_-
@johnvboy Thanks for that — I didn't realise it was 14 "dropped" items that Isabelle "allows"
Yeah, I'm still floating around a four-star rating, even though Isabelle insists I litter my lovingly-crafted island (a multi-layered New York style grid system with one big river running through it) with tat from the Nook shop
Turns out, I want to turn my island into something comparable to this... beautiful Forest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFoNsJc9GWI&ab_channel=jvgsjeff
Now I'm making a bigger effort on combining nature with structures.
@RebeccaStow97 Do you have a dream code for your island? Interested to see it having read the article!
I stripped my island of absolutely everything, took away all streams and ponds, tore down all of the hills and removed all trees and flowers. Once I did that and restarted with just a few flowers and trees, the game became significantly less stressful.
I did all of that back in June.
I've visited some towns that were so dense, objects popped into view as I moved my character around and the game play was slow and jerky.
Didn’t Alex do an almost identical article to this months ago? Pretty sure I’ve read something super similar on here
I got 5 stars. Then made the whole island a forest with a small number of open areas and a village with rivers running through. My star rating has dropped but I like it a lot more.
Yeah, I totally feel this article, lol. I went through the same thing! I wanted a rural feel to the town because I miss the quaint lil forest vibe from the original. (Not to mention I really like the look of the weeds in this game!)
So I sold my soul to Isabelle to get that five star. After adding a ridiculous amount of assorted mama, papa, and baby bears around my island, throw in a Godzilla, swimming pool, and a satellite antenna for good measure, I finally achieved the 5 star rating and got my golden watering can... only to find out that the golden boi still breaks after a certain amount of uses. Still, the extended frontal range is worth it! Plus it seems to last around 3x the usage of a normal one.
But anyway, best believe my town is getting renovated back to be a forest after I've collected a satisfactory amount of lily of the valley flowers.
This is good.
As a professional urban reforester and afforester, I can say with authority.
This is good.
So, TL;DR:. Isabelle's a demanding b##ch?
Actually the holiday packs have made hitting 5 stars much easier. Halloween offered a lot of decorations and i hit 5 star just by decorating naturally. But that meant keeping Halloween up forever since removing anything meant dropping to 4 star. Getting Christmas decor is horribly difficult, i can't find much in the way of diy recipes for the creative set. So I put menorahs and light up reindeer everywhere until Isabelle approved again and could finally get rid of Halloween.
It'll remain Christmas until bunny day.
I don't understand, getting 5* is a challenge now? I did it by accident, without the "clutter"... Like, it's Animal Crossing, now Dark Souls.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...