Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ 3.0 Update

After years of waiting since the 2.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo has finally unveiled the next major update coming to the beloved island simulator. As the largest addition to New Horizons since release, the 3.0 update is likely to bring back a massive resurgence of players returning to their island homes.

Even if the upcoming 3.0 update for New Horizons isn’t the fully-fledged Switch 2 sequel some fans were hoping for, its enhanced edition still helps take advantage of Nintendo’s next generation of hardware. Unfortunately, even with all the bells and whistles coming to New Horizons in January of next year, the biggest problem with the game will become even harder to ignore,

New Horizons’ Latest Update Is One Of Its Best Yet

Hours Of Exciting New Content To Experience

While there were already rumors circulating about some kind of update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, its 3.0 update still managed to surpass expectations. Finally adding more multiplayer functionality, a creative island-building mode, and even brand-new NPCs themed after Splatoon 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, 3.0 provides plenty of reasons to revisit your island all these years later.

If you’re a Switch 2 owner and willing to spend a little extra money, you can also enjoy better resolution, larger lobby sizes, mouse controls for building, and even voice detection to call out to your favorite villagers.

Even if none of these differences are mandatory to enjoy the rest of the major additions arriving alongside the 3.0 update on January 15, it’s likely to become the definitive experience for fans to enjoy moving forward. Regardless of which system you play on, the multiplayer building is easily one of the most revolutionary features coming to the game, finally delivering on a feature that’s been requested for half a decade now.

Most of the upcoming content updates surrounding decorating and building new islands or hotel rooms for your furry friends, leaving behind some of the more grueling aspects of New Horizons that make it hard to overcome when returning to the game after a long break. After the positive reception the New Horizons news has had since its surprise initial announcement, it’s clear that it’s not too late for more Animal Crossing content to come that could help alleviate some of these issues.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Daily Life Is Still Its Weakest Aspect

A Large Barrier To Entry For Returning Players

While many of New Horizons’ flaws were easy to ignore when it first released, a lot of the problems with its daily life only became more prevalent as time went on. Post-launch updates were able to address some of these issues with new seasonal events or reasons to check into your save file, but New Horizons still pales in comparison to previous entries in the franchise.

The biggest of these issues comes from the lack of notable NPC interactions in New Horizons, and the game has received plenty of complaints that its villagers feel more soulless than they used to be. While it’s easier to understand why Nintendo smoothed out some of the mean personality traits of villagers from previous games, not enough was added to make up for the lack of intrigue.

Planning house visits and parties, fun minigames to play with your villagers, and surprising NPC events are all defining elements of Animal Crossing. New Horizons‘ disappointing coverage of these areas reduces the feeling that your island is thriving and changing without you. Aside from having to simply clean up more debris, there isn’t much to suggest a world beyond the player.

On top of the struggles with New Horizons‘ lack of content with its daily life, the overall quality of life struggles to match up to all the new systems and mechanics that Animal Crossing‘s Switch debut had to offer. From not being able to craft items in bulk, long wait times for building, and tools breaking at the worst moments, New Horizons has desperately needed new quality of life updates for several years now.

Especially with the New Horizons 3.0 update adding even more multiplayer functionality with up to 12 players on Switch 2, a more streamlined co-op experience is desperately needed to avoid waiting forever for each player’s unskippable flight cutscene when joining or leaving. Even if it’s unlikely that all of these issues will be fixed in future updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there’s still one chance for the series to thrive.

New Horizons’ Sequel Needs To Balance Both Playstyles To Succeed

Helping The Animal Crossing Series Reach Its Full Potential

It might be too late for Nintendo to iron out all the hitches in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still an amazing game in its own right. While part of its success was likely related to its initial release timing, New Horizons can still offer countless hours of fun, especially with even more freedom to interact with the environment to build your perfect island life.

With the latest updates offering more pick-up and play potential that thrives on bursts of creativity, rather than logging in every day to check up on your NPCs or progress through seasonal events. It’s not hard to see why Nintendo chose a focus on building, given how burned out players may be from their daily island life after so long, but more quality-of-life updates would still have been appreciated.

While it sometimes feels like Nintendo has been avoiding one of its most popular Switch titles, thanks to the general lack of updates or announcements, it’s unlikely that Nintendo will overlook the sheer explosive popularity that New Horizons had on release. At this point, a sequel should only be a matter of time.

It might be sad to eventually say goodbye to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but the next game’s potential to balance the best aspects the series has to offer over the decades is still an exciting prospect, especially if it wants to compete with more recent cozy life sims.

Released

March 20, 2020

ESRB

E for Everyone: Comic Mischief

Developer(s)

Nintendo EPD

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Engine

Havok