YMMV / Animal Crossing: New Horizons

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • A number of older players have pointed out how the interior design in the main room of Harvey's photo studio bears a striking resemblance to the Casting Couch set ubiquitous in audition porn, which combined with the Video Game Perversity Potential of the photo studio function as a whole leads to some of these players creating some... interesting... setups with their amiibo villagers.
  • Sometimes male villagers may be wanting to sell you a ball (as in, you know, a soccer ball). However, the way it's phrased... can raise some eyebrows.
  • In a Southern Hemisphere island, Toy Day occurs right in the middle of summer, and villagers will remind the player about the heat and to stay cool. But the phrasing of their dialogue can result in some... questionable connotations...
    Jock villagers: Wow, you look hot! Maybe I oughta whip up a frosty batch of protein shakes for when Santa gets here...
  • Due to the way Dodo Codes are generated, the output can sometimes result in some very interesting codes. For example: D1CKS, 3D1CK and V4GN4.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • One fan theory that gained popularity during the unpopular Bunny Day event is that Zipper T. Bunny is actually a terrorist madman, set on destroying your island's ecology by replacing all its natural resources with Easter eggs. Alternatively, he's replacing the resources for personal gain because they're more valuable on his own island's Nook Shop than eggs. A third group plays up his bereaved private attitudes about his job and portray him as The Woobie, being worked to the bone by unspecified employers in his single-handed preparations for Bunny Day and being "thanked" with verbal and physical abuse from townsfolk.
  • Previous games have always hinted at a falling out between Tom Nook and Redd as former business partners. A lot of newer fans to the series are now interpreting it as them also being bitter exes (influenced partly by the Flick/C.J. ship and how their official status as business partners led shippers to joke about "business partners" being a euphemism). One of Redd's password questions in Wild World is "Someone to wed" with the answer being "no way Nook", which puts an inexplicable canon spin on this.
  • During the Festivale event, if you use one of the reactions to dance near Pavé, he will stop and stare at you. Is he annoyed at you stealing his spotlight, or does he just want to see how well you can dance?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Those fruit-themed electronics may seem really stretched out, especially◊ the (juicy-)apple TV, which looks like it's just a bad jab at the Apple TV. Except not only has that TV has been in the Animal Crossing series since the first game, which came out over five years before Apple's product, those TVs are real and are being made by a Chinese company called Hannspree for over a decade now, and they also predate Apple's media box by several years.
• Adorkable: Flick is soft-spoken and shy at first, with a quirky and socially awkward personality peeking through later when the player talks to him more. His personality comes off as very endearing as a result.
• Award Snub: Of the three categories the game was nominated for at the 2020 Video Game Awards ("Game of the Year", "Best Family Game", and "Best Multiplayer"), it only won the "Best Family Game" award, losing "Game of the Year" to The Last of Us Part II, and losing "Best Multiplayer" to Among Us. To say people were not happy about losing the former award would be putting it lightly.
• Awesome Art:
  • The museum's interior immediately generated a lot of buzz thanks to its beautiful visuals and design choices based on more recent real-world museum and aquarium exhibits. The realism and accurate little details make it feel like a place you could actually visit. It's so true to life, in fact, that staff at the Monterey Bay Aquarium hosted a tour of the museum on Twitch during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • On a smaller scale, the more fantastical flooring and wallpapers have a lot more bells and whistles that make them really special. The Ringside Seating, which would previously flash lights when you rang the Judge's Bell, is now fully animated with a sprite-based cheering audience. Several wallpapers, such as the Chain-link Fence and Cherry Blossom Trees, feature parallax to create the illusion of depth. More subtly, the Skull Wall has a gradual, realistic glow-in-the-dark effect when the lights are turned off.And to say nothing about the absolutely mesmerizing Galaxy Flooring, which makes you feel like you're walking among the stars in space!
  • The dreamscape you visit when talking to Luna after sleeping on her dream bed is a gorgeous burst of pure fantasy, with swirling purple clouds and a beautiful starry sky.
• Broken Base:
  • One of the things that hasn't changed over time since the games' release is the argument as to whether New Horizons being treated as a live service game with content being implemented over time is a good or bad idea:
    • Some people like the service, and claim that it extends the lifespan of the game even further than if it never got an expansion (as in Wild World and, to some degree, New Leaf), giving the players a reason to come back to it after a while, and also goes along with the games' theme of slowing down and enjoying life.
    • Some players don't approve of the live service method, believing that due to the content being (re-)implemented over time, it gives players who play regularly less to do and gives off the impression that the game is unfinished, as well as missing out a core component of the series; playing however you want to, something that is made harder when features and upgrades are missing.
    • Some like the idea of a live service function in the game, but believe that the content delivered should have been relegated to seasonal events and content brand new to the series only, not adding back in items from previous games (like various types of fish, shoes and clothes) or re-implementing functionality that practically anyone familiar with the series would consider base-game functions by now (such as diving, meeting Pascal and Pavé, as well as any other number of NPC's like Brewster, and using the Dream Suite) within those events, and these should have been in the base game to begin with.
    • Before the 2.0 patch changed it, players had issues with the live service time-locking events like Toy Day and Halloween. One side of players were fine with locking events behind internet time so as to discourage time traveling and allow everyone a chance to experience the event on the day, and the other side pointed out that time-locking events would cause more issues than it solves, like encouraging black market trading for items that are hard to obtain^note unlike in New Leaf which has event NPC camper vans, which contained most, if not all, of the event items you could get from say, Jingle, locking players out who missed the event in question through no fault of their own ^note if they either did not own the game when that event was active, or if they couldn't play due to real life commitments, something prior games allowed for, even if it was controversial, as well as the baggage of events being tied to an always-online connection, meaning offline play was impossible. As mentioned, this was fixed in the 2.0 patch, and events can now be time travelled to without facing any unusual punishments.
  • Does New Horizons really lack content or are players nowadays just impatient and entitled? Fans can't seem to agree. The 2.0 update did make this debate die down to less heated levels, as it added quite a lot of old mechanics and characters from past games. The argument has shifted somewhat to one side believing the 2.0 update makes the game finally on-par (or close to it) with the previous entries in the franchise, while the other side points out that taking a year and a half to make the game feel "complete" doesn't absolve the issues most of the player base had to deal with in the interim.
  • One of the few points of contention lashed towards the previous mainline Animal Crossing entry were villagers becoming so nice that they've (supposedly) become "bland". New Horizons shares a similar criticism towards the dialogue, with many arguing that the Jerkass tendencies of the villagers (particularly those of the Snooty and Cranky villagers) in the GameCube game (and Wild World to a lesser extent) lended their characters some humor and diversity, and that the possibility that they could warm up to the player character if they spent enough time getting to know them made befriending villagers more rewarding (Although this is only popular belief. They will still be rude no matter how much the player helps them, and this sort of dialogue is only seen in the various localizations of the game. The villagers are much nicer in the original Japanese version). Others are glad that villagers no longer insult you just for simply communicating with them, and find the rudeness from older games to be obnoxious, unfunny, or unfit for a children's game that's supposed to be a form of escapism. Others find themselves in the middle of this, appreciating that villagers are nicer than they once were, but still wishing there was more variety or noticeable change when they eventually warm to the player character. Overall, the fanbase can't decide if the gradual change of characterisation in this series has become legitimately blander and softer over time, or if it's just a Nostalgia Filter and When I Was Your Age... talk.
  • A couple of online communities for the game allow players to use Nook Mile Tickets as a sort of "second currency". Reception on this practice is rather mixed. Some argue that Nook Mile Tickets aren't that valuable to begin with; they're really cheap all things considered, especially with how plentiful Nook Miles are to obtain. Others argue that mystery islands can be used to make substantial profits (especially by using them to farm scorpions or tarantulas), as well as a means of finding the desired villager when the player has an empty plot, and these justify their demand.
  • The practice of using spoofed/mock amiibo to move in villagers on demand is a source of debate. There are currently no rules against mock amiibo, but this hasn't stopped some people from wondering if it is illegal. Others think the practice is justifiable given the cost, rarity, blind buy nature of packs, or the regional availability or lack thereof. Others can understand why they are used, but think it is underhanded because Nintendo does not receive any money from spoofed amiibo, whereas legit amiibo still gave Nintendo and the manufacturers some money. Others dislike the practice because it drives down the costs of rare amiibo cards, some of which can go for half the price of the game. The Re-release of the Sanrio Cards getting immediately targeted by scalpers and the inability to adopt them from others have intensified the debate.
  • The fact that the November 5th 2021 2.0 update is the final major free and paid update for the game has lead to decent chunk of discontent with fans, which was discussed before the update was live. One side argues that it being the final major update for the game is unfair, considering the game is barely over a year old and the players were promised updates for years to come^note It should be noted that this is a popular misconception. The developers promised the players a game that could be enjoyed for over 3 years in a past interview. Along the way, this was misconstrued into them saying that players would receive updates for the game for over 3 years., and not only that, but there's still characters and mainstay mechanics missing from past games. The other side argue that while the lack of major updates in the future is going to be disappointing, they argue the game has already done enough to introduce new and missing content with 2.0, putting it more on par with earlier entries, and thus "completes" the game.
• Catharsis Factor: The introduction of cooking in the 2.0 update also allows for making food out of certain catches, including the Sea Bass. This essentially allows players some way to finally kill a Sea Bass and even devour it after years of its status as a Goddamn Bat. It helps that its recipe can be learned the next time you catch a Sea Bass after unlocking cooking. The Horse Mackerel, another common (and less profitable) ocean fish has a recipe dedicated to it as well.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most people aiming to get villager photos will gift them a ton of wrapped fossils; as long as they're the "X Tail" or "Right X Wing" kind of fossils, they'll never enter the villager's furniture inventory (so you don't have to worry about messing up their interior design), and most exceed the sell value of 750 bells (since 1.4.0) you need to get an item back from that villager. It helps that you can get four fossils per day, costing nothing but a bit of shovel durability. Since the nerf to the sell value threshold in 1.4.0, wrapped pairs of foreign fruits and wrapped stacks of 3 vegetables have also become popular gifts for the same reasons.
• Contested Sequel: Does the games' use of a live-service to implement and reintroduce content make it a good way to play and keep engaged with the game, or does the lack of base-game content compared to New Leaf make it an unfinished game being sold at full price? Even a year after its release, players are still deciding.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Since the release of the fan-made New Horizons buying and trading website dubbed Nookazon, a parody of Amazon, there has been an outcry of fans claiming that it goes against what Animal Crossing is about, creating a toxic space that hadn't existed in previous instalments of the franchise. This is ultimately false, as dating back to Wild World all the way back in 2006 there existed an eBay parody website called Nookbay which served the same purpose. The "toxic" aspect as also existed as far back as seeding, which online Griefers used in Wild World to brick cartridges without warning; in this manner, the current space of the series is far gentler, if perhaps a bit greedier.
  • While the villagers in New Horizons aren't nearly as mean-spirited as they were in the original GameCube game, many players have pointed out that the villagers do still have a bit of meanness in them, contrary to the belief that they're nice and polite all of the time. For example, their passive aggression is thinly veiled when interacted with too many times in a timespan, Cranky villagers glare threateningly and snap at the player if pissed off, Snooty villagers comment on gossiping about the player to other villagers and can even make negative remarks about the player under their breath, and Sisterly villagers have rougher personalities in general, are extremely blunt, and laugh at the player if they're stung by wasps. As well, Smug Villagers will abandon the player to deal with their wasp problem on their own if the player tries to interact with them while being chased.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Wasps, which had been known as bees in previous games. Like the previous entries, these flying insects rapidly and aggressively chase the player until they are stung. However, unlike the previous games, they can actually knock you out if you get stung by them without taking medicine from a previous wasp attack.
  • A more literal example with the Tarantula and Scorpion (okay, scorpions aren't spiders, but they are arachnids). You've gotta be on your toes when you spot one, because if it bites/stings you, you pass out immediately and lose the chance to catch it. Doesn't help that they're also pretty aggressive (well, aggressive for Animal Crossing, anyway). Unlike previous games, they can also attack you if you get too close, regardless if you had the net out or not, so if it sees you, it will try to attack you. By which we mean it will gallop towards you at just short of your running speed, forcing you to spend quite some time fleeing frantically until you can dash indoors or get enough distance on it to attempt to scoop the arachnid up with your net (especially difficult if you don't have the net equipped when it charges at you). Taking too long sneaking up on one can also trigger its attack mode, and if you swing your net and miss, you're toast. On the bright side, catching and selling either one will net you a cool 8,000 bells, which can turn them into easy sources of bells if one winds up on the islands that spawn only Tarantulas or Scorpions.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Flick's intense interest in bugs, apparent trouble speaking to people other than C.J and eventually the player, and tendency to say his rather unusual thoughts about insects out loud are all traits commonly found in people on the autism spectrum or with other neurodivergencies, leading many fans to see him as autistic.
• Discredited Meme: The popularity of the game has led to increased pushback at the idea of Tom Nook being a crooked, hyper-capitalist landlord/loan shark/mob boss, at least now if not in the past. Some longstanding aspects dispelling this are still present (namely fact his loans are opt-in^note though this only began in New Leaf and have no deadlines or interest fees), while new changes like his Nook Miles deals (where he outright rewards you for fulfilling public service tasks) and overall kindlier characterization blew further holes in the idea. Combined with out-of-universe backlash towards player-driven "villager black markets" treating villagers as high-value commodities, as well as attention towards players fully willing to bully villagers off their islands simply for their unappealing designs, more fans are seeing him as a pretty generous boss, all things considered.
• Dry Docked Ship: Redd/Tom Nook as bitter exes that may or may not still have some Belligerent Sexual Tension or even still be interested in each other, but that have broken up in bad terms, usually due to business decisions.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The punkish artist lizard Flick (the new host for bug catching events, replacing Nat) and the small boar Daisy Mae (who runs the stalk market in place of Joan) became very popular with fans once revealed; Flick embodying numerous elements of freelance artist culture particularly endeared him to the online art community. The third new traveling NPC of the game, C.J. (who replaced Chip as the fishing tourney host), wasn't popular initially, but became liked after release for his characterization as a "seasports" commentator, and his connection to Flick as business partners/roommates gets the two shipped together by fans.
  • The dodo birds Orville and Wilbur got a surprising amount of fan love upon the game's release, as they were barely shown pre-release. The most one popular between the two is a toss-up, as both have their own share of fans.
  • Of the new villagers in New Horizons, the glasses-wearing, heterochromatic, and fashionable smug grey cat Raymond seems to be the most popular; it helps that he bears an uncanny resemblance to the famously snazzy David Bowie in cat form (which gives "Cat People" a whole new meaning). Judy, the sparkly pastel snooty cub, isn't too far behind in popularity either. Alongside those two, the red wolf villager with a peppy personality, Audie, has also become super popular thanks to her appealing design and disposition. It helps that her name's sometimes theorized to be a Tuckerization for Audrey Buchanan, the 88-year-old grandma famous among the Animal Crossing fandom for having played New Leaf for 3,580 hours with the username "Audie".
  • Dom, to the point where he may have overtaken Audie in terms of popularity around May 2020 and is seemingly reaching Raymond's level. His constantly-on-the-verge-of-tears facial expression when doing anything helped endear him to fans on both sides of the sea, citing him as a prime target for playfully bullying in fan created content and in the game.
  • Sherb, the new lazy goat villager, has also risen in popularity since the game's release as a result of his cute appearence and his sleep-themed house. It should say something that he usually trails right behind Raymond and Marshal in popularity lists.
  • Of the New Horizons 2.0 new villagers, Shino (the red and white peppy deer) and Sasha (the teal lazy rabbit) are the two most popular villagers; Shino for her really nice and unique design with a Peppy personality, and Sasha for having a cute appearance. As a testament to their popularity, after their initial implementation, on the popular fan-made trading website Nookazon, these villagers would often go for thousands of Nook Mile tickets and over 30 million bells.
  • Tiansheng (the orange and white jock monkey) and Ione (the blue, normal squirrel). While not quite as popular as the aforementioned villagers, they're actually quite popular on their own due to their cool designs and unique aesthetics, being heavily sought after on fan-trading sites such as Nookazon. The snooty mouse, Petri, also gained quite a following for her unique science theme and having her ear colors red and blue, after the magnetic directions.
  • While all of the new Gyroids have their fans, four of the most popular ones are the Wallopoid, Bendoid, Crumploid, and Squeakoid, with the Wallopoid in particular getting a lot of attention. The Bendoids have depressed expressions and movements while making groaning noises, the Crumploids look and act uncanny even by Gyroid standards, the Squeakoids are especially Ugly Cute, and the Wallopoids often move extremely fast to the point of hilarity.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • The sighting of a gravestone in the February 2020 Direct (at 20:30) has brought up tons of speculation, since it doesn't look anything like the gravestones the player could get in past games' Halloween events. One of the most popular theories was that Joan is the one buried there, due to her old age and the same Direct showing a new character, Daisy Mae, who fulfills the same role Joan did. Daisy Mae does, thankfully, confirm that Joan is still alive and that she simply retired, letting her grandchild take over her business. Another suggests that Tortimer is the one buried there. When the game was released, however, the gravestone (known by the odd name "western-style stone") was revealed to be simply a piece of furniture that can be crafted and placed anywhere by the player.
  • At launch, there was a second floor of the museum with a few benches and nothing else, prompting speculation of a future expansion, such as an art wing or the Roost. Villagers would even rarely mention these locations. Dummied Out room IDs were later discovered corresponding to a two-room art gallery, the Roost, and a Gyroid gallery. The April 2020 content update did indeed add the art wing, and the Roost and Gyroids were added in a November 2021 update.
  • This picture preview◊ of the 1.10.0 update shows a villager house that didn't belong to any of the villagers that were in New Horizons at the time. Many players began speculating about what this house could possibly mean, ranging from foreshadowing for new or returning villagers (such as The Legend of Zelda and Splatoon villagers introduced in the Welcome Amiibo update of New Leaf, or villagers that haven't appeared in the series since the GameCube installment) to simply being able to customize the exterior of the villagers' house. When the 2.0. update was revealed both hypothesis were confirmed, as the update introduces eight brand new villagers and marks the return of eight villagers to the series after being absent for a long time (four from the original Animal Crossing, and four from the Japan-exclusive Dobutsu No Mori e+).
• Fan Nickname:
  • Melba has gotten the nickname "Koko Krunch" among players in Malaysia due to her resemblance to the cereal's mascot. This also applies to Alice, Faith, Ozzie and other similarly colored koalas in the game.
  • In a similar vein, Octavian has gotten the nickname CIMB in Malaysia due to the resemblance to the banking mascot (which is a red octopus). Brand Name Takeover is very prevalent in this country.
  • And taking the joke to it's logical conclusion, Tybalt started being jokingly called Maybank (after another bank who has a Malayan tiger — same species as Tybalt — as its mascot) by Malaysian fans.
  • Another one from Malaysia that is not related to brand names: Squirrels are jokingly nicknamed "swiss rolls" due to their curled tail resembling variants of said confectionery. This started when one local streamer on Facebook revealed that looking at the squirrel villagers' tails always made him think of the confectionary and thus makes him hungry.
  • In a case not related to Malaysian corporations, one of the songs K.K. can play if given an invalid request (featuring the internal filename "Hazure02") is commonly referred to as "K.K. Sparkle" or "K.K. City Pop" by fans thanks to its uncanny similarities to the 1982 song "Sparkle" by City Pop artist Tatsuro Yamashita.
• Fandom Rivalry: It has gained this reputation with Stardew Valley, due to fans disagreeing on which game is the better life-sim. That said, there is some crossover between people who play both.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Save-Game Limits have always been a staple in the series, and at times seen as a Scrappy Mechanic even in earlier games as save files had to share one town. However, in previous entries it was excusable by factors like Controller Paks/Memory Cards being cheap to collect, the DS/3DS being single-person handhelds, and the limitations of the Wii's save system. However, with New Horizons, save data is shared between Switch accounts, despite them normally being having unique data attached to them. As a result, the only way to get a brand new Island for a friend or family member is to buy a new Switch altogether.
  • After the Save-Game Limits, the most controversial thing about New Horizons is the concept of the Resident Representative, which grants the very first player special privileges, including all main forms of progression. This started in New Leaf, where the first player would be elected mayor and be responsible for building up the town. Once again, New Leaf being on a handheld meant that players were much more open to owning multiple systems and game copies per household.
  • Another common criticism of New Horizons, even among those who consider the game a step up from New Leaf, is that villager dialogue is noticeably limited and one-note, with characters feeling static and saccharine as a result of their small interaction pools (with more variable dialogue being locked behind the game's Relationship Values). The limited amount of possible interactions is actually a trend that stretches all the way back to the first game. However, in earlier cases it was excusable due to the technical limitations of the respective systems; while the Switch is also limited, it's considerably more powerful than previous systems. The November 2021 2.0 update has updated villager dialogue, giving them more diverse things to say when interacted with.
  • In every game in the Animal Crossing series, planting too many trees causes a penalty to the town rating. However, in previous games, it was difficult to reach that limit without intentionally working for it, due to the fairly small town layouts and limits placed on where trees can grow. In New Horizons, the island is much larger and gives more freedom to customize its layout, so it's much easier to run into the tree limit if designing a town with dense vegetation. Not helping is the fact that, in New Horizons at least, Shrubs count as trees for the sake of this limit.
  • Leaving items on the ground has always hurt the town rating, but it becomes more of a problem in New Horizons for a few reasons: First, players tend to leave spare resources outside for ease of access. Second, until it was silently patched, the dropped item limit counted items dropped on table space. Third: Duplicate DIY recipes (of which the player will receive many) cannot be put in storage and must be dropped to get them out of the inventory...at least until the Version 2.0 update finally allowed them to go in storage like most other items. Still, the inability to do so for over a year and a half is worth noting.
• Friendly Fandoms: Building up to the release of New Horizons, a small, but amusingly odd fandom crossover was forged between that of Doom Eternal after both games were delayed and set to be released on the same day. Considering how tonally opposite both games are from the other, it was only natural that fans have joked about the Doom Slayer interacting wholesomely with characters of Animal Crossing, and many pieces of fanart have depicted Doom Slayer and Isabelle being in an Odd Friendship. This includes each game's logo put together in the design and fonts of the other game.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In the initial release, an exploit allowed you to duplicate items if you pocket them as they're being rotated on a table. For example, catch a tarantula or scorpion, empty your pockets, and repeatedly do so with the arachnid, and you can pay off your debts each in one day of being a tarantula/scorpion farmer, and have basically infinite money afterwards. This was swiftly patched out in 1.1.1.
  • A duplication glitch known as the "mailbox glitch" was discovered that lets you dupe any item you can mail. All it requires is two extra characters and a second controller, and involves confusing the mailbox into thinking the mail hasn't been read. This means almost anything except for bugs and fish can now be duped. This was patched out in 1.2.1b.
  • Flick is seen as being much more lucrative than C.J. when it comes to making Bells by selling critters. While the average fish has a higher sell price than the average bug, it's easier to manipulate bug spawns on a Nook Miles island to ensure that the best ones spawn faster. Creating a "tarantula island" and filling twice-upgraded pockets with them can get you a profit of over 400,000 Bells per trip while Flick is in town, and you're only limited by how many tickets you can afford. Just like in New Leaf, once palm tree beetles show up during the summer, it's possible to make even more than that - up to a whopping 720,000 bells per trip.
  • As lucrative as selling bugs to Flick is, selling fish to C.J. shouldn't be overlooked. In particular, fishing for sharks (which sell for anywhere from 8000 to 15,000 Bells) from June to September and storing them away until C.J.'s next visit can lead to a player making well over a million Bells in a single day.
  • Turnips. While normally restricted by the fact selling prices are generally low and upward spikes are both rare and hard to predict, online communities very quickly sprung up for people to advertise good turnip selling prices on their islands, and with the sheer number of people playing the game, at any one moment there are always at least a hundred islands posted online with amazing turnip exchange rates. This made it incredibly easy to net more than a million Bells in a single day with little effort (if one is willing to sit through long queues and the extremely tedious forced arrival and leaving cutscenes). Then dataminers discovered that there are methods to the madness (i.e. that there are statistical formulas the game uses to determine the price of turnips for the week) and release web-based applications that could help predict the best time to sell turnips for the week with unbelievable accuracy.
  • Customizing a tool resets its durability. As long as the tool is customizable, and you have a customization kit handy, you can indefinitely extend its usage, making it better than a golden tool which only has 2-3 times more durability than a regular tool and cannot be customized.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The fly's exhibit in the bug section of the museum depicts a tank of them in the laboratory area, next to a model of a DNA strand; the Drosophila genus of fruit flies happens to be a popular test subject for studying genetics, thanks to their relatively simple genomes and high reproduction rate (both by animal standards).
  • The way fish and bugs move around in the museum are reflective of their real-life counterparts; special mention goes to the oarfish, which actually does stiffly hover in the water instead of wiggling around like other fish.
  • The little flap at the rear of the football fish's model is, believe it or not, another football fish— a male one, to be precise. The better-known wide-jawed, lantern-headed look is exclusive to female football fish, with males being small specimens designed solely to latch onto and be absorbed by the female as a bizarre method of insemination.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: French fans love the jock bird villager Peck, who is average tier at best, because Antoine Daniel, a popular French Youtuber best known for his web show What the Cut, spent his stream "bullying" the jock villager he had since the start, covering his house with trash, crafted trash items and fossilised poop (and incidentally winning 5-star doing so), and at the end of his stream, "redeeming" him by giving him a beautiful garden, thus making him quite popular.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Sea bass and olive flounders, due to their silhouette size being just barely smaller than that of many rare and valuable ocean fish like oarfish and blue marlin while being extremely common and practically worthless (selling for only 400 and 800 Bells, respectively). The only way to tell their shadows apart is that sea bass/olive flounder shadows are slightly shorter and stouter, but unless one of them spawns right next to or right before/after a rarer fish it's damn-near impossible to tell at a glance, especially with how ocean water now noticeably distorts the shapes of fish shadows. The same is true for carp (in lakes) and black bass (in rivers). One fan has even created a music video parody of "Bad Guy" expressing her frustration with constantly catching bass. Fortunately, you'll sometimes get a Nook Miles reward for one of these normally-disappointing catches, and if you can sell to C.J. when he appears it ups their value by 50%, making them Not Completely Worthless on occasion. Thankfully, the 2.0 update finally gave them a use in cooking.
  • Along with the above examples, other annoying fish include the horse mackerel for making it difficult to find the already rare barreleye^note a small fish that only appears in the sea from 9 PM to 4 AM and the dace and cherry salmon for doing the same for the incredibly rare golden trout^note a medium sized rare fish that appears on clifftops during Spring and Fall from 4 PM to 9 AM. Both the barreleye and golden trout sell for ludicrously high amounts of money, at a whopping 12,000 and 15,000 bells, respectively (tying the latter with the coelacanth, stringfish, and great white shark for the position of the most expensive fish in the game); the horse mackerel, dace, and cherry salmon sell for peanuts by comparison. The horse mackerel is especially loathed for being worth only 150 Bells, which is one of the lowest selling prices for a fish and worth even less than a sea bass. It also doesn't help in the slightest when it is spawned by fish bait.
  • While a suckerfish may sell for an okay 1500 Bells, it's a nuisance to fish up when you're hoping for a shark instead (since sharks and suckerfish both have a fin protruding from their shadows). And while suckerfish do have a slightly smaller shadow than the ones belonging to sharks, good luck being able to tell without extensive scrutiny. But perhaps more annoying than anything else is the message that shows up whenever you catch one^note "I caught a suckerfish! I thought it was a shark! Oh, wait - now I get it. 'Sucker'...", which can become very aggravating to see repeatedly.
  • For the Bunny Day event, the water egg specifically got a lot of ire for showing up whenever there's a medium-sized silhouette in any body of water. Even after this was supposedly patched, it still happens frequently enough for people to complain about it. Note that the other egg types don't get nearly as much hate, since the player could easily ignore their existence. The 2020 Bunny Day event also overlapped with the game's first fishing tourney, where not only would the water eggs still spawn and not add to the player's score if caught, but they would also have an extra dialogue box when reeled in, wasting time for folks trying to get a high score.
  • Leaf eggs also get a bit of flak, as a money tree has a chance to spawn them instead of the money bags, costing the player however many bells they buried. Some players reported just digging up the young trees and holding on to them until the Bunny Day event is over, which causes its own problems as they take up valuable inventory space and can't be put in storage.
  • In general, when looking for rare bugs, any bug that can't be despawned (scared off), particularly the common ones with low resale values. Every insect on the map is one less chance for a high-value insect to spawn, and catching a non-despawnable bug just to open a slot for a high-value insect to spawn is a waste of net durability. Special mention goes to the Mole Cricket - not only is its spawn unable to be suppressed by removing every tree, flower and stump (done to force scorpion and tarantula spawns on Nook Mile islands), getting it out of the ground to despawn it involves the difficult task of listening for where its call is the loudest!
  • As with the sea bass, black bass, and suckerfish before it, acorn barnacles and sea anemones have become noteworthy as annoying things to catch while diving, only selling for 600 and 500 Bells respectively. Luckily, they're stationary, making them easy to avoid normally...but you have no choice but to likely run into them if you're looking specifically for pearls or Gullivarrr's communicator.
  • Among mobile sea creatures, the moon jellyfish and sea slug only go for 600 Bells, and the sea star sells for an even lower 500 Bells. It's easy to recognize and avoid these creatures if you don't immediately dive on them, since they move very slowly in comparison to almost every other shadow, but they are incredibly common all the same. The sea slug and sea star also appear all year round.
  • Perhaps the most annoying sea creature to encounter is the sea cucumber. If you're used to thinking that mobile sea creatures that produce a lot of bubbles always sell for a decent amount of Bells, you're mostly right, but the sea cucumber is the one egregious exception to that rule. It only sells for 500 Bells, even less than some stationary sea creatures! It also isn't that much slower than scallops are, so if you aren't careful, you'll be catching a lot of these, and they are incredibly plentiful in the six months they show up in.
  • In terms of material gathering, obtaining softwood or hardwood (instead of regular wood) from trees. There are plenty of popular DIY projects that require regular wood (e.g. the Ironwood set). In addition, 3 regular wood must be consumed per 100 wood pieces chopped to craft a new stone axe. In contrast, there are only a few more useful projects that require softwood and hardwood, which makes getting them relatively pointless. Softwood is particularly annoying to liquidate, as the maximum amount of softwood that can be liquidated in a single crafting step is 15 (herringbone wall), as opposed to 30 for hardwood (log bed) or even 90 for stones (stone arch). It is only exaggerated in the Bunny Day event where wood eggs get in the way of obtaining regular wood, or any type of wood for that matter.
  • Although this problem had already been an issue for people in the Southern Hemisphere back when the game launched, by the time September hit in the Northern Hemisphere many players were having issues collecting acorns and pine cones. Most of the time, the items dropped are tree branches, which are already plentiful thanks to random tree branches spawning underneath trees at the start of each day. Because of this, collecting a full stack of acorns or pine cones means repeatedly shaking a tree for it to drop items, and most of those drops will be tree branches that are likely to be thrown away. Most annoying of all, though, is that if you aren't prepared and holding a net when first shaking a tree, it is likely you'll be caught off guard and possibly stung by wasps when collecting acorns or pine cones, especially if you try your luck with multiple trees. The November 2021 2.0 update alleviates the problem with acorns if you have unlocked Tortimer on Harv's island. During Fall, he is replaced with Cornimer, who gives players a random number of acorns once a day when they talk to him.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Time traveling back to a previous Redd visit— even one you've already bought art from— tricks the game into thinking that it's a new visit rather than an already-completed one, re-rolling Redd's stock and enabling the player to buy another piece of artwork. Furthermore, this can be done an unlimited number of times provided that the current date and the date of the visit aren't too far apart, giving the opportunity to farm art by constantly time travelling back and forth between an earlier visit and a later date. The one caveat of this, however, is that it's still subject to the 10% chance of all four paintings being fake and the low 20% chance of a real piece of art being guaranteed to be one not already donated to the museum. Consequently, the process is still fairly drawn out, albeit far less so compared to trying to get new artwork without time travelling or visiting other islands. It's perhaps because of this that Nintendo has never implemented a patch against time travel-based re-rolling despite patching out other item-farming exploits.
  • Watered flower buds can still reproduce the next day, presumably because the game does the reproduction check after the flower grows to its next stage (which itself doesn't remove the watered status). Since the odds of a flower reproducing increases the more outside visitors water them, but not everyone has five friends that can visit every day, a prospective gardener could intentionally trample their breeding field before opening their island for randos to come water them. That way they can get that 75% bonus to breeding odds without fearing that a griefer will pluck all their flowers.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Back in 2013, someone made an Animal Crossing fangame with this game's title.
• Hype Backlash: While originally well-received during its first year cycle, New Horizons started receiving much more negative criticism later on, especially from veteran players of the Animal Crossing series, due to a combination of many factors, such as some of the dialogue being very repetitive (especially when regarding the villagers and Isabelle's daily announcements), the lack of features and characters present in previous games in the series, the updates not living up to the expectations of players given that they mostly only add furniture and updates to holidays, and the overall ridiculous amount of Scrappy Mechanics. And while there was a big update to the game in November 2021 that addressed many criticisms and was overall well-received by players, some common complaints remain untouched, such as the inability to craft more than one DIY recipe at a time, as well as the continued absence of upgrades to Nook's Cranny.
• Improved Second Attempt: Though New Horizons itself is a divisive game, Happy Home Paradise is considered a vast improvement over Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer by addressing its main criticism: Happy Home Designer was a standalone game that felt barebones without any extra content to supplement it, and many fans felt it would be better served as DLC for Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Meanwhile, Happy Home Paradise is DLC that seamlessly integrates with the rest of New Horizons, enhancing both parts of the game and allowing you to switch between them whenever you want a change of pace.
• I Knew It!:
  • When a journal bundle for New Horizons was revealed on Target, a page that lists the birthdays of special characters lists a character named "C.J.", whose identity had yet to be revealed at the time. Considering how "Chip Jr." is a potential name that C.J. could stand for, many fans guessed that C.J. would be the name of the then unnamed beaver that was revealed on the boxart for the game. Come the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct, and it reveals that the new beaver's name is indeed C.J.
  • After players noticed the amount of features from previous games that were absent here and Nintendo's announcement of using periodic updates to add in real-world holidays, fans predicted that the cut features would make returns over time with updates of their own, and these rumors were galvanized following dataminers uncovering ID data in the game's code for various locations and characters not present in the game on launch day (most notably the art gallery, which had been a standard part of the museum throughout the series prior to New Horizons). Come the announcement of the April 23, 2020 update, and these speculations would be confirmed true, with multiple features and characters from New Leaf—including the art gallery—returning. And come July 3rd, Diving was added to the game.
  • After so many implications in the game, the 2.0 update reveals that Nat and Chip are indeed the fathers of Flick and C.J. respectively if you invite them to the Roost.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:
  • Several older fans of the series dislike the fact New Horizons has apparently been pushed Animal Crossing into the mainstream, thanks to its huge presence on social media as well as several stories of celebrities playing the game. This is in spite of the fact that Animal Crossing hasn't been an obscure game in quite a long time; Wild World was a top seller for the Nintendo DS, selling 11 million lifetime units, and was decently popular among Nintendo's audience, while New Leaf was the game that got the franchise pushed into more mainstream attention, selling well in part because it came with screenshot functionality that encouraged players to share their gameplay online (and became very popular on Tumblr and Twitter, which also got people to play), and was undeniably a bigger hit upon its release, selling almost 13 million lifetime units before New Horizons broke its record in May 2020 in a much shorter timespan (this was due to the COVID-19 pandemic boosting the sales of the Switch and some of their games an order of magnitude more than normal), with the game selling (as of June 2020) 22.4 Million Units. In fact, the only game in the series that could even be considered "niche" is the original 2001 game, which sold under 3 million units, and given that back in 2001 it was a new IP that didn't have much of an audience outside of Japan, that's hardly surprising. As with New Leaf, New Horizons also encourages gameplay sharing, helping the games' sales even more. Basically, the franchise was never quite as "obscure" as veteran fans like to claim it is.
  • Just like Nagito Komaeda and Sans before him, Raymond's popularity among fangirls has proven to be a double-edged sword. Because he (along with the other villagers introduced in New Horizons) lacks an amiibo card, he has proven to be rather rare compared to the other villagers. Combined with his cute design and a bit of Memetic Mutation (such as having him dress up in a maid outfit and sing Bubblegum K.K.), this has made him the most demanded villager of all. This has led to his fans taking rather extreme measures to add him to their island, such as harassing someone who happens to get Raymond on social media or buying him off sites like eBay for upwards of $900 USD. Because of incidents like these becoming publicized, a vocal hatedom for Raymond has emerged, with trolling campaigns against his fans (i.e. pretending to have him in boxes) gaining prominence on outlets such as Discord and Twitter. The "Raymond Black Market" eventually crashed due to too many competing sellers offering him.
• Junk Rare:
  • For all the hassle it takes to even unlock the recipes, your reward for getting your hands on a golden tool is just something with two or three times the amount of durability of an iron tool and the inability to be customised to reset the durability despite how scarce golden nuggets are in comparison to iron nuggets. The golden watering can is the only one with added benefits, being able to create gold roses as per tradition and watering slightly more tiles at a time.
  • The Bunny Day Wand and its associated DIY recipe is only available after crafting every other Bunny Day-themed DIY recipe by the end of the Bunny Day event. Similarly, Fishing Tournaments and Bug Offs give out wands as prizes and Halloween's ultimate reward is the DIY recipe for the Spooky Wand. However, there's no functional reason to own multiple wands despite craftable wands being only received from Celeste (who visits rarely in evenings) and the above-mentioned special events; you can only set eight wand outfits total, as opposed to setting a different eight for each wand you own.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • New Leaf already had a lot of transgender fans, but New Horizons adds onto that fanbase by making the series even more unisex. The hairstyles, clothing, body options, and dialogue aren't gendered (though the dialogue will apply male and female pronouns to the player in games set to a language with gramatical gender, such as Spanish or French)^note at least not visibly; the "female" style adds a bra texture not normally viewable in-game, and players can change their gender (referred to as "style") at any time.
  • One of the interactions has a villager ask you what your favorite thing to watch is. If you choose romantic comedy, said villager will mention her favorite being about a Princess of Rocketboarding and her girlfriend, the Princess of Explosions. A lot of LGBT people fell in love with this dialogue.
  • C.J. and Flick are written as "partners," so even after Nintendo clarified it as being a business partnership, many still headcanon the pair as being in a relationship given how close they are.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Label is this in terms of weekday visitors. Having assigned you a task to show off an outfit based on a random theme, if you don't have suitable clothes already in your wardrobe then you're more likely to spend more money than the rewards she gives you (Kicks, Leif, and Saharah at least have the excuse of being stores with random items that can't be obtained anywhere else, and the Gullivers' rewards are also exclusive to them) which are discount tickets to the clothing store (which would have helped before doing her missions, you can't use the tailor tickets on anything more expensive than 3,000 bells which ironically would have been the ideal time to use them, and are mostly redundant if one is already swimming in bells) and a line of (mostly) female-centric clothes with a pattern not everyone will think is appealing, especially since the game already showers the player in free cosmetics from your villagers and the occasional balloon. She also lacks any Nook Mile achievements tied to her, unlike Redd, Gulliver, and KK Slider.
• Memetic Mutation: Here.
• Memetic Troll: Zipper T. Bunny has infamously gained this reputation due to the first Bunny day event in 2020 taking up almost half of April, disrupting players still new to the game that wanted to grind money from fishing, chop wood for items, and hit rocks for Iron and Gold Nuggets and making the game almost completely unenjoyable.
• Misblamed: A criticism between New Horizons and its sister mobile game Pocket Camp is that people who have exclusively played New Horizons have complained about Nintendo "choosing" to not port over features and items from Pocket Camp into New Horizons, with many complaining that they're intentionally stifling the game that you'd have to pay $60 for versus the one that is free-to-play. It is largely ignored by those who make these comparisons that Pocket Camp and New Horizons have different developers working on the game and Nintendo is simply the publisher of both games, not exactly having control over what items make it into New Horizons from Pocket Camp and vice versa.
• More Popular Replacement: Flick and C.J. the sons of Nat and Chip who take over their jobs, seem to have resonated more with fans than their dads did in past games, likely due to their more interesting and relatable archetypes and their described offscreen friendship dynamic.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The DAL jingle, especially the little guitar riff at the end.
  • The game in general has been praised for its sound design, as many players enjoy the sound of the player character running across various surfaces. The sound made changes depending on what the player is running across and their type of shoes, or lack thereof.
  • Whenever you enter a villager's house and hear them hammering away at their DIY table or cooking something, meaning that you'll potentially get a new recipe.
  • The glimmering sound when you successfully wish on a shooting star.
• Older Than They Think: Many veteran players have complained that the villagers in New Horizons are so nice that not only does it border on saccharine, but also make them fall flat as characters, and thus yearn for their villagers to be rude again like they were in past games. New Horizons is not the first Animal Crossing game with villagers that are "too nice", and the only games in which the villagers' rudeness was cranked up to eleven were in the original GameCube game, and maybe Wild World. It also only applies to the English localizations, as the localizers seemingly felt like the games needed to have their scripts spiced up. The villagers Took a Level in Kindness come City Folk, and in New Leaf they acted pretty much the same way as they do in New Horizons. Ironically enough, the Snowboys are not too different from the rude villagers of the GameCube game, and are not very well-liked by players for this reason.
  • Another criticism is how "repetitive" with the dialogue is, when the older games also had the same issue. It's more pronounced here because not all of it is available to the player from the beginning. Villagers start divulging more of their personal lives once the player spends time interacting with them — something which never happened in any main game prior.
• Old Guard Versus New Blood: New Horizons falls firmly into the New Blood camp, as not only are its gameplay and customization options more experimental than in previous games, but the advent of content updates and encouraging of online interactions means that while the base gameplay is functionally identical to previous installments, the game's essence appeals to newcomers who were swept in by a Newbie Boom as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Meanwhile, the Old Guard has resorted to claims of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! and often feel alienated by the drastic gameplay changes and the progressive drip feeding of content.
• Pandering to the Base: The Wedding Season event may be this. Not only is it the first wedding themed event in a main line Animal Crossing game, it practically encourages the player to dress their villagers up in wedding themed outfits, create a chapel and fake marry their villagers or have them marry each other on Harv’s Island if they wish it. The player can also give the villagers heart crystals^note The events currency needed to trade for Wedding Themed furniture to which the villagers will have a unique reaction, resulting in them either blushing in embarrassment, being oblivious to the implications of the gift, or friend-zoning the player ... because they were oblivious to the implications of the gift. It is perhaps the closest the player will get to breaking the No Hugging, No Kissing rule with the villagers, even though it doesn't actually lead anywhere. Perhaps Nintendo has officially taken notice of the furry fandom. Then there's the Happy Home Paradise DLC expansion and the ability to make two villagers roommates. Nothing stops players from designing their house in a way that makes them look like a couple.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • For those not wanting to catch the listed bugs for Bells, using Nook Miles Tickets is a game of "let's hope I get a normal island or an island full of bonus goodies and not a hell zone of tarantulas or scorpions."
  • In multiplayer, there's the looming horror of seeing a communication error wiping away any and all progress you made with your friends.^note The game saves every time someone enters or leaves an island. But if something happens to kick one player off like a bad connection or an infant child pressing the power/sleep button while their parents are playing, it reverts to the last save point to avoid item duplication or players losing rare or valuable items.
  • Playing the game at night on your home island is also this, because you never know when or where a tarantula or scorpion may spawn and charge at you (despite them selling for a good profit if one is able to catch them). And there are those who only get to play the game at night, often due to work or other daily commitments, meaning that the only time they get to play is when those two are out and about, unless they decide to keep their Switch "time-traveled" so they can play during their island's daylight hours or play with other players to prevent them from spawning altogether.
  • Data-mining early on revealed that the game marks players who time-travel without informing them. While this hasn't been implemented in any gameplay, it's caused some players who regularly time-traveled, or even did it just once, to worry about the future prospects.
  • Happy Home Academy rates you based upon your home design. Meaning they are apparently somehow viewing the inside of your house. You never actually see them do this, or know when they'll be by...
• Periphery Demographic: Blind gamers found this game to be surprisingly accessible, particularly due to distinct sound cues for most every action.
  Ross Minor: "It is very, very rare to find a new game that I'm able to play. There's probably ten games tops that I'm able to play by myself independently, and so whenever the blind community discovers a new game, it's a really, really exciting thing."
• Popular with Furries: Per the norm due to being an Animal Crossing game. In particular, some of the new Ensemble Dark Horse villagers such as Raymond and Audie have practically been adopted by the furry community.
• Ron the Death Eater: Zipper in this game very quickly became this due to his creepy appearance and him being attached to the negatively-received Bunny Day event, with popular fan art portraying him as either an Axe-Crazy murderous psychopath or an Eldritch Abomination.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: Originally, the Custom Designs portal could only be accessed within the Able Sisters's shop, which means that outside of the shop's business hours, it could not be used, proving problematic for those who cannot play during that time. It was later made into a Nook Phone app, allowing it to be accessed 24 hours a day.
• The Scrappy: The Snowboys have attracted significant vitriol from fans for being picky about their proportions, complaining, and guilt-tripping the player when they aren't made "perfect", which is tricky for players to achieve. It doesn't help that you only get one shot a day at building a Snowboy, which means building him wrong means losing out on a large snowflake and/or DIY recipe for that day, and every other day it remains until it melts. Many players wanted the option to smash a Snowboy with a shovel or axe if he complains about his size.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Here.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Before then, most of the fanart making Tom Nook more attractive was through humanizing him. But thanks to his more relaxed look with his hawaiian shirt, shorts and sandals, he now has plenty of fanart portraying him as a Big Beautiful Man.
  • The Dodos are usually portrayed with massive rear ends, with humanizations making them appear far more sculpted than what their in-game body type would indicate.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The tutorial is a week long (potentially more depending on the circumstances), which is unusually long for an Animal Crossing game and meters out what can be done on given days, with basic features not unlocking until midway through, like the store and the museum. After that, at least one additional week is needed to get the town up to a 3-star rating in order to attract the attention of K.K. Slider, with the process of getting this rating being its own second tutorial for town customization and managing to be even more tedious thanks to the lack of specific objectives beyond vague suggestions from Isabelle. Once it's complete, the sandbox opens up and the amount of content available increases exponentially.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Of all the past games in the Animal Crossing franchise, New Horizons gave players more freedom than ever to create their own personal paradise using the vast number of furniture, customization, more design slots, and terraforming. Unfortunately, with all this freedom came the type of players this trope is named after, who take the island decoration aspect far too seriously and turned this otherwise lax game into a competitive environment. It's gotten to the point where when Nintendo shared their Dream Code so that players could explore their island, "guys" began attacking it for being too "ugly" or simplistic compared to the extravagant islands they've built.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • A number of fans have noted how the bassline of the 7 AM song sounds very close to Michael Bublé's "Everything" and "Haven't Met You Yet".
  • Likewise, a number of fans have noted how the baseline of the 2 PM song sounds very close to the bassline of "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat and Tears.
  • Meanwhile, the 8 AM song's organ part sounds oddly similar to the bridge of "My Iron Lung" by Radiohead (i.e. the "if you're frightened, you can be frightened" part).
  • The song for 10 AM closely resembles "Black Cow" by Steely Dan, particularly in the bass and drumline.
  • Some have noted that "Chillwave", one of the songs added in the 2.0 update, sounds oddly similar to "Don't Disturb This Groove" by American synth-funk duo the System.
  • One of the tunes K.K. Slider can play if the player requests an invalid song, featuring the internal name "Hazure02", sounds uncannily similar to "Sparkle" by City Pop artist Tatsuro Yamashita. For this reason, the Fan Nickname "K.K. Sparkle" emerged for the track in lieu of an official title beyond its filename.
  • The groove of the 5 PM theme is rather similar to that of Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets".
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The revelation that cloud saves wouldn't be usable on New Horizons both confused and upset a number of players, who pointed out that the Animal Crossing games are ones that people can play for years. Some even threatened to boycott the game because of it, while others petitioned in the hopes that Nintendo would enable cloud saves in a future patch. The compromise Nintendo eventually came to is a separate system to the regular cloud saving other games use, that makes periodic back ups while the Switch is not in the game that can be used to restore an island in case of a lost or broken Switch.
  • The reveal that each console would only have one island, which all players would have to share, has also been unpopular. Since all saves on the Nintendo Switch are tied to the console instead of the game card, this means having to shell out for another console if you and a family member want to have your own independent islands.
  • The game wouldn't allow data to be transferred from one Switch to another at launch. Say you bought a brand new Switch and wanted to replace your old one, you'd be in for a bad surprise when every save file except New Horizons transfers to your new Switch. It was not until the fall of 2020 that save transferring would be implemented.
• That One Achievement:
  • The "Cast Master" Nook Miles goal has quickly become the most infamous milestone in the game for requiring catching 100 fish in a row without letting any get away. Even though there are methods to help increase the chance of not letting one get away,^note Hold your thumb adjacent to the button so you won't be tempted to press early, close your eyes and listen to the audio cues only sometimes you'll be presented with a fish that'll latch on only to immediately let go before any human could possibly react. Save Scumming to preserve your streak is difficult thanks to periodic autosaving, but it's possible to quickly close the game after losing a fish before it can save. Ultimately, this reward can come down to pure luck rather than skill.
  • To a lesser extent, for those without access to a Nintendo Online Account or afraid of visiting strangers' towns, Conquering the Stalk Market is just as bad. The achievement requires one to make a whopping 10 million bell off the Stalk Market by buying turnips and selling at islands with high turnip prices that are not necessarily your own. The counter can also go backwards if you make a loss instead on a particular week. If you can't visit a different island, this achievement is long and tedious even if a price tracker/predictor is used to mitigate the randomness, and even then the price tracker will not help you if the RNG God decrees that you be stuck with the decline pattern for the week, which always guarantees a loss.
• That One Level: One of the most tedious early quests requires you to obtain 30 softwood, 30 wood, 30 hardwood, and 30 iron nuggets so that Timmy and Tommy can open up Nook's Cranny. The wood is easy enough to farm— while you can only extract three random wood from one tree, there are enough on the island to make it to 30 of each type. Iron nuggets, on the other hand, are more scarce; these are extracted from rocks, which can each drop a maximum of eight items a day, but only if you manage to hit them quickly enough. While crafting materials are new, the rock timer is a returning mechanic that new players may not know about. Additionally, each island only has six of these rocks, and some may be located on the initially inaccessible higher levels of the island. The result is that the wood can be obtained in a day or two, while the iron nuggets can take a week or more. This was made worse for those unlucky enough to start the game during the Bunny Day event, which replaced a portion of materials drops with eggs (eggs don't replace iron nuggets, but they can replace stones, which are needed to craft flimsy axes for gathering wood, which is replaced by eggs).
• That One Sidequest: Here.
• Theme Pairing:
  • Gulliver occasionally gets paired with Orville or Wilbur by fans, given that they're bird characters with a theme of traveling across the ocean.
  • Audie and Whitney tend to be paired together a lot, romantically or platonically, due to them both being wolves with contrasting color palettes—Whitney has a more wintry look compared to Audie's summer vibe.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The game initially seems to set up a Divergent Character Evolution for Timmy and Tommy, with the former staying a merchant while the latter gives the newcomers information and serves as a tutorial guide for the first few days. However, they revert to being Single-Minded Twins again after Nook's Cranny is built, causing some players to express disappointment at the wasted opportunity of finally giving them some character depth.
  • Isabelle is given the spotlight every morning with her daily announcement, but she only announces a few things: visitors at the campsite, someone moving in or out, villager birthdays, shop upgrades, special events, seasonal craft materials, giving out seasonal DIY recipes, and meteor showers. None of these are frequent events, with many being tied to early progression. Once K.K. makes his first visit and the gameplay opens up, most days she will simply lampshade the fact that she has nothing valuable to say. Isabelle's other functions involve her resetting a villager's catchphrase or clothes, changing the town's tune, changing the flag, or explaining the town's rating (which also goes unannounced unless you check with her), making her feel a bit underutilized. While she was finally updated in Version 2.0 to announce visits from special NPCs on days where there is no other news, it's easy to wonder why this common complaint about her wasn't addressed earlier.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: One of the new villagers introduced in the 2.0 update is a rabbit named Sasha^note Mitchell, in the Japanese release of the game, who was revealed to be a male Lazy villager. Due to his feminine appearance, unisex name, and being the only male villager with the "fashion" hobby, some fans have theorized that he is a transgender boy. That said, this interpretation has been met with some backlash due to it supposedly tying feminine qualities and hobbies to gender identity.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • A number of people have admitted to being rather creeped out by some of the fish in the game now that they're depicted more realistically.
  • Special NPC's such as K.K. Slider can join the player in daily stretches. However, his being unusually tall and lanky without his guitar has proven to creep some players out.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Once you invite your first campsite visitor on the island, Tom Nook will offer you to sell plots of land for potential new villagers. Each plot cost around 10,000 bells, but Tom Nook promises to give 1,000 Nook Miles for each resident that moves in to that plot. However, this only applies to four plots of land that you set up after the campsite visitor, which is a measly 4,000 Nook Miles. Any subsequent move-ins to a plot of which a villager moved out from does not earn you 1,000 Nook Miles at all, which begs the question of this feature being added if only the four plots of land that you set up after the campsite visitor only have this condition.
  • The "Item Delivery and Liquidation" service offered by Dodo Airlines. It is a feature that allows you to sell items from your inventory or have them shipped back to mailbox at home if you need to drop off some items off to make space in your inventory. While it can be useful in certain scenarios such as the Wedding Season, the baffling drawback is that this can only be used on Harv's Island, not the mystery islands where a player would need it more, particularly if they are grinding for materials. The current inability for the player to directly travel from one island to the next without first going back to their home island and starting the "I want to visit" process again makes one wonder why the service was added to the game to begin with. Even more puzzlingly, after the 2.0 update, Tortimer's stall allows players to directly put items into their house storage *and* retrieve items from said storage, making the Item Delivery service redundant.
• Unexpected Character:
  • During the fall, Tortimer's co-op on Harv's Island will be headed by Cornimer, the almost-certainly-a-costume autumn wares NPC who hasn't made a canonical appearance in the games ^note though he is in a minigame side mode in Welcome amiibo since Wild World.
  • In Happy Home Paradise, Nat can appear to give a lecture about bugs in the players school facility, which unlocks the ability to use bugs on the villager vacation home plots.
  • Though it was initially believed that NPC's could only be invited to The Roost via Amiibo, NPC's such as Mr. Resetti can make random appearances at the counter, having a coffee break.
• Unfortunate Character Design:
  • More like "Unfortunate Item Design", but the appearance of the brown-colored Soft-Serve Hat was likened to that of a poop, earning the nickname "Poop Hat".
  • Of the new Gyroid types, fans have noticed that the Whistloid is shaped suspiciously like a bong.
  • As for Villagers, Marlo's design is supposed to invoke an archetypal crime boss, with his English name even being derived from Marlon Brando. Unfortunately, his chubby proportions (courtesy of him being a hamster) combined with his expression makes him look like a stereotypical neckbeard. Made even worse in his poster, where he's outright wearing a fedora!
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Flick, the new chameleon NPC who visits your island and deals in bugs, attracted some of this. Flick's punk design, neutral name, and medium-pitched voice got players confused what gender he was. Villager dialogue confirms that he's male.
  • A lot of fans thought Dom the sheep was a ewe before his personality was confirmed due to his pink coloration, androgynous name, and overall feminine appearance.
  • While this has been a long-time issue for fans of the series, many new players for New Horizons believed Leif to be female before they had seen male pronouns be used for him.
  • The villager Bluebear is sometimes mistaken for being male due to her slight resemblance of a jock bear cub named Kody, who is also a blue cub.
  • Sasha, the lazy rabbit from the 2.0 update, was believed by a lot of western fans to be a girl before his personality and pronouns were confirmed in the Pocket Camp promotional update, given his unisex name, which is often believed to be a female name in the west, and cute appearance.
• Win Back the Crowd: The November 5th 2021 2.0 update, which serves as the game's final major free and paid update for the game, did wonders to stifle the growing negative reputation the game had among fans (prior to this, there was a big drought in content updates, with players leaving the game or simply waiting for news of an update). The 2.0 update addressed most of the complaints players had with the game during the first year, reintroducing things from past games with their own spin on them, as well as introducing new things to further establish the game's unique identity.

---