Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer Reviews
As a whole Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is pretty good. It is a solid package that uses everything that the 3DS has to offer and it's has loads of entertainment value for those that like to create…
Although it doesn't feel as full as New Leaf, Happy Home Designer is a fine game that should've aspired to more.
Although there are a fun mix of characters and the writing is what you'd expect from an "Animal Crossing" game, "Happy Home Designer" requires entirely too much work and not enough satisfaction for even the most dedicated fans of the franchise. If you're starving for some of the series' classic gameplay, you won't find it here.
Just like its prequel, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is bursting with content to uncover. The sheer volume of items to unlock is staggering, allowing you to cook up all manner of homely homesteads and fabulous facilities. The same world that captivated millions of players in New Leaf returns, with familiar faces that do a lot to augment the appeal of the core interior design mechanics. However, the lack of any real challenge is a fatal flaw, and while it's possible to create a stunning variety of different rooms and buildings, the gameplay does become repetitive quite quickly. Fans of New Leaf - and the series in general - may well be prepared to forgive such sins, but for everyone else this is a likeable but largely forgettable title that will entice young, undemanding players but will be too dull and samey for everyone else - despite the unmistakable charm which permeates the entire package.
Overall, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer proves to be a substantial disappointment for the franchise. Yes, the game does make large strides in the designing element of Animal Crossing, but it fails to create any sort of experience that is even remotely engaging or captivating. Sure, the series' charm, wit, and quirky dialogue is still all there; though, unfortunately at the end of the day (yes, many will probably finish off the game within a day), manyy players will be left scratching their heads wondering why they ever spent $40 on this cash-in Animal Crossing title.
Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer looks and sounds like the game that fans were expecting; unfortunately it lacks the depth and addictiveness to keep you interested. Even with its cast of adorable characters and excellent soundtrack, the gameplay becomes stale really fast and you'll find yourself grasping at what little the game has to offer in order to find something to hold your attention.
Ultimately, Happy Home Designer is an adorable and charming game that will delight fans interested in more lighthearted Animal Crossing fare. It might not have enough variety of content for the series' more hardcore fanbase, so if you're looking for another New Leaf this likely isn't the title for you. Folks who thoroughly enjoyed the design aspects of the last mainline game, however, should get more mileage out of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer.
It's an absolute feat that Nintendo was able to retain the trademark Animal Crossing charming feel without including many of the tropes that have been present since the series began back in 2001. That novelty, however, is fleeting, and after a few hours of play, you're left with a shallow feeling that your work has gotten you nowhere. Even when viewed through the lens of "just a spinoff," Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is disappointing.
We want to play in ways beyond the gaming population's insular past, cavorting through catastrophes and destroying the present. Our future depends on the ability to create, and design, something new. It's fun to tear something down but there's a deeper joy in building something up. Besides, there's nothing more catastrophic than the wrong wallpaper.
Overall, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a welcome spinoff that helps diversify the Animal Crossing brand and cements it as one of Nintendo's cornerstone franchises (if it wasn't already). The Big N has shown an increased willingness on putting fresh spins on older series and this is a case where it works naturally. It makes perfect sense for an interior design game to exist in this universe, not just because of its town-building mythos but also because of its folksy charm.
If you ever felt intrigued by the Animal Crossing games, but found their open-ended nature to be more daunting than relaxing, then Happy Home Designer might just be the answer. It seems like this game was also made to satisfy Sims players, who did nothing more but customize and furnished various homes to no end.
A mini-game at a maxi-price
It's a fun little distraction that doesn't require too much attention to enjoy.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer will appeal those love decorating homes and collecting Nintendo's new amiibo cards, but for the rest of us, it's a broken home.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a fun twist on the original Animal Crossing games.
Feels like it would benefit from a longer plot, but still fun if you overlook the repetitive nature.
Given Animal Crossing's sickeningly cutesy look and feel, it's tempting to play tricks on it, to fool its adorably simple-minded denizens into living in squalor and liking it. But the game is just too sincere to prank, the way that toys can't feel embarrassed of how they're played with.
On the whole, it's fair to say that most spin-offs are doomed to live in the shadow of their more popular source materials. Even so, Happy Home Designer did have the potential to stand on its own two legs - the sole ingredient needed to confirm that fact being the element of fun, which it sadly lacks. Everything is polished to a very typical high-gloss, Nintendo-brand sheen, but without any deep or meaningful gameplay system in place to bolster the charm, Happy Home Designer ends up feeling disappointingly shallow, with minimal longevity. Perhaps as an eShop game the effect would have been softened - at best, there are a few hours of enjoyment to be had, but the finished package lends little to the justification of a standalone release.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer isn't going to dethrone Animal Crossing: New Leaf as the number one game in your 3DS' play log – not by a long shot. In taking away the scant few of the franchise's stressors, however, it becomes a profoundly therapeutic life simulator that respects and rewards every millilitre of creative juice you pour into it. It's a stop-gap on the road to Wii U/NX but a detour that won't soon be surpassed.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer on Nintendo 3DS is a flawed spin-off that's still sure to settle right into the hearts of fans and creative folk.