- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- The concept of Nook being a money-grubber was taken up to eleven when it was revealed that this game would feature microtransactions, and that Nook was the one in charge of them in-game. Jokes about Nook being greedy enough to come out of the game and take players' real money sprung up near-instantaneously. It only got worse with how there's an in-game picture of Tom Nook bathing in money.
- This video
of Isabelle dancing after having consumed "Vacation Juice" has led to people seeing her as a Hard-Drinking Party Girl.
- Annoying Video Game Helper:
- When engaging in normal conversations with the animals, they will remind the player to check Isabelle's Beginner's Guide routinely, even if the player does not need it. Similarly, they will share other beginner's advice such as "make sure you craft lots of furniture", "go to OK Motors to expand your camper", or "remember to check the Market Box for items". Amusingly though, Sisterly animals will lampshade this after advising use of Leaf Tickets in crafting like a sales pitch, claiming they are paid in flower starts every time they mention Leaf Tickets. ("And now back to your regularly scheduled (animal name).")
- Lloid at the garden is very, very chatty. If you leave your character idle there, Lloid will spout an obvious instruction related to your garden's current condition like "Water your plants!" every few seconds, even if the garden has no problem at all (Lloid will either tell you to look at the blooms or check out a friend's garden in this case). Tapping a plot that cannot be interacted with will also result in Lloid telling the player to tap another, interactable plot. So, no matter what, unless you're actively doing something to the garden, Lloid is always there to annoy you.
- Originally, garden events would periodically flash a "recommendation" on how to use Flower Food or Lloid's Guaranteed Catch before going on to shill "Leaf Ticket packs with Flower Food are on sale!" and "Use Leaf Tickets to guarantee a catch!" respectively. Similarly, fishing tournaments flashed a hint on the Large Tourney throw nets (which also cost Leaf Tickets to use) if you fail to reach a size goal with the haul of fish you give to the host and are still missing at least one of the event's prizes. Thankfully, these were removed several years into the game.
- If a new (or reissued) cookie is added, one of the Nooklings will walk up and announce that they're currently stocking the aforementioned cookie. This is in spite of the game flashing you a notification whenever a new cookie is added and you being able to directly access the fortune cookie shop from the map screen. This no longer applies in Complete as every month has a fixed cookie selection now, even including ones new to this version.
- Archive Panic: When the game was first released, there were only four amenity themes and a modest amount of campers. Within six months, there were more than twice as many themes (with all the furniture and amenity upgrades to go along with them) and nearly 100 campers, and with updates being implemented much more frequently, it's much more difficult for newer players to near "completion" (by maxing out friendships and amenity upgrades and filling the catalogue) than it was for those playing regularly since the release. Even long-time players can struggle to unlock new villagers to meet as the mechanics for introducing new animals added via content updates was changed to force them to level up once to unlock a random animal at each level to shipping off Gulliver to find maps for new animals.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In October 2018, Jack seized control of a Fishing Tournament in place of Chip. No explanation was given for how he was able to do so, and when Chip returned the following month, his static, scripted dialogue was never changed to address what had happened. The same thing happened when he lost two of his Fishing Tourneys in early 2020, first to Tom Nook and the Nooklings in March 2020 and then to Zipper T. Bunny the following month.
- Broken Base:
- The frequency of monthly events. Some players like it to justify being active in game (and more options for dressing up/decorating), some don't for making them burn out easily, especially if the events feel prolonged due to mere bad luck. While those that are pro-event also justify their preference of more events because they keep the game fresh, the anti-event players, especially regarding the garden events, feel like the game basically misses the whole point of Animal Crossing, a casual game that players are free to check whenever, not being heavily pressured by the overabundance of time-limited events that start just two days to immediately after the end of a previous one- giving players barely to no break between each event.
- Thematic crafting events costing Leaf Tickets, first introduced in the Super Mario Crossover Event. While the mechanic is already applied to the limited-time "special character" furniture (K.K. Slider's chair, Tom Nook's chair, Celeste's telescope), its presence in this type of event manages to bug some players. However, some others defend it as the event also gives out Leaf Tickets via easily-doable Timed Goals and the obvious fact that, well, Nintendo still needs to make money from this game.
- The Super Mario Crossover Event itself, which lasted a whole month, divided into three parts, unlike other thematic crafting events. Mario fans see it as a treat, non-Mario fans that like filling the catalog don't mind the new items, other non-Mario fans simply don't care about this event and consider it a nice little break (especially after the exhausting Leif's Spring Garden Event), while the rest absolutely loathe this event. Emphasis on the last one, as their reasoning include that it's either causing more stress or deemed unnecessary. It also doesn't help that every part has one craftable item that requires Leaf Tickets to make! (see above)
- Disappointing Last Level: The final event items introduced on September 2025 are rather divisive among players, but the Huge Cake Scavenger Hunt takes the cake for having the new items have zero interactivity except for one (the huge decorative cookie) that players felt it is not a strong finish for Complete-exclusive new content.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: The base animals at launch have had a significant boost in popularity while they were just a handful out of hundreds in the mainline games.
- Tex especially got this, simply by proxy of being one of the best early-game sources of cotton, a critical resource.
- Fandom Rivalry: Is starting to have a subtle but growing one with players of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. See that page for more info.
- Fridge Horror: There was an event where the player could catch the squid and octopus forms of Inklings and Octolings and show them to Chip, who would then talk about them much the same way he would other fish. Yes, that's right: Chip wants to eat the sentient, civilized Inklings and Octolings.
- Game-Breaker:
- The camp caretaker (previously a Pocket Camp Club perk in the online version) in the Complete version makes the toned-down events even easier due to he/she giving the player event collectibles every cycle. It is even possible to not actively participate and just rely on the caretaker, yet still clear the event on time.
- The Shovelstrike Quarry rewards buff in Complete also extends to the gyroidites, but much more significant, to the point where it is possible to clear the event in just 1-2 days, or if the player has enough Leaf Tokens, in a single cycle.
- Quick Crafting in Complete. By spending Leaf Tokens with Cyrus, the player is able to permanently reduce the time it takes to craft things. Unlocking all three levels only requires a few hundred Leaf Tokens, and with how the game throws so many of them at you during the early game, you can easily unlock all three levels on your first day of play, giving you a permanent 24 hour reduction to crafting times - meaning that pretty much everything in the entire game will craft instantly.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- In Rover's Garden Safari event, sometimes a player can end up obtaining two of the same reward (two Rover's hoods, two Rover's tables, etc.) upon completing tasks. This is caused by completing two active tasks at the same time. Keep in mind that normally a player can only obtain one per task completed. This seems to have been fixed, as this doesn't happen in Lottie's Gothic Rose Festival.
- Version 1.3.0 update brought one where a player could keep more items than their current inventory's max. Only up to a certain amount, though, so still no infinite inventory for them. Also, this only affected some players. This was later fixed.
- Using certain furniture arrangement and having the player run in a specific way, the player can end up clipping into the furniture. This allows the player to take unique photos with unique setups like swimming in an aquarium.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- One of the things a Villager can tell you is that handcrafted furniture (referring to Cyrus' role in this game) is the trendy thing nowadays. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you have to build most of the furniture yourself.
- In New Horizons, one of the main gripes about the 2020 Bunny Day event was that the egg crafting materials took over everything that wasn't insects, particularly when they were fished up in place of seasonal fish. Pocket Camp's own Bunny Day event (started the same day the NH one ended) sees Zipper hosting a fishing tournament where the aim is to catch as many egg-shaped fish as possible, though at least there's a limit every few hours before regular fish start coming back.
- In 2018, Pocket Camp introduced the Eevee set. This won’t be the only time Pokémon crosses over with Animal Crossing.
- It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Players that have gotten used to the online version's more demanding events had started to complain how too easy the game is at times, especially with events like the Fishing Tourney being easier to be cleared early causing its duration to feel dragged out, which further minimizes engagement (after loss of real-time player interactions).
- It's Hard, So It Sucks!: On the other hand, players that had experienced the online version without whaling are happy with Complete and felt that the online version put too much pressure if they wanted to complete the events, which they felt was unlike the more relaxed mainline games. It also did not help that many of the items were locked behind the much costlier Leaf Tickets, even stuff as basic as plain flooring.
- It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Players that were active during the online version's run (especially during the 2020s) were disappointed to see how little actual new content was added to Complete. December 2024 and the 2025 April, July, and September are the only months with new event themes, and there are a total of six new fortune cookies added. With the newer events being what the old-time players were looking for, they have to contend with months of repeats before getting there.
- Memetic Mutation:
- With the game's announcement, jokes about how Tom Nook is now after real money via micro-transactions cropped up almost instantly.
- Farm Tex for cotton.note
- I was just saying hello.note
- Jail Camp note
- Cyrus' inability to cook.note
- No one's around to help.
note - Vacation Juice
note
- Mis-blamed: Many fans hoist the anger at Nintendo for the heavy amount of microtransactions in the game, when the fault is actually DeNA's as they are the ones who actually develop the game.
- Power-Up Letdown: Many Complete players had regretted renting the golden rod despite the cheaper price once normal rod players noticed the higher rate of double fish every reel in in this version, not to mention the camp caretaker giving more event fish every cycle.
- Replacement Scrappy: Though Chip and C.J. are divisive in general depending on the player, the latter is especially disliked in this game ever since he replaced Chip for non-holiday Fishing Tourneys since November 2020 until the player can see Chip again in the reissued tourneys in Complete. It is not just from C.J.'s way of speaking, but also how his frequent selfie animation after submitting the player's catches takes a few seconds and cannot be skipped.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- Cross-pollinating and capturing rare creatures at the garden have a chance of failure. While it's mildly irritating in the former as the game is more lenient on how the players care for their garden and what to do with the flowers, the latter is more devastating for completionists due to the fact that it, being tied to events, is a ten-day Timed Mission, and bad luck may cause them to not be able to complete all the event objectives on time despite all that hard work. Players think that the rare creatures' catch rate seems to be rigged against them, especially since you can use 10 Leaf Tickets to guarantee a catch. Furthermore, It's not even guaranteed that all blooming flowers will produce creatures, which had players annoyed at the prospect of RNG on RNG — especially in the second part of the event (the last six days), which lasted only a few days, had flowers that took the longest to bloom and produced the fewest creatures that were the hardest to catch yet demanded the same amount of creatures as the longer and easier first part of the event.
- During Gyrodite events, Shovelstrike Quarry will most commonly offer Gyrodites as a reward, and, on most days, will make Gyrodites the only reward available for that day for each 12-hour period. However, with no warning, the game can replace the Gyrodites with a different random crafting material in the afternoon, and if you're unable to gather up enough invites in the morning to enter before the rewards shift (or forget to enter in the first place), the invites are effectively wasted and you have to wait till the next day to attempt to gather more invites and enter again. Unfortunately, the inverse scenario (a non-Gyrodite crafting material in the morning and Gyrodites in the afternoon) is much rarer.
- Buying from the market boxes of friends. Not only are players unable to view their friend's entire Market Box from the Friends menu (only the first four items are shown), there's no way to just search for the needed item, leading to an endless scroll-and-click to see if anyone has the one thing you need. Players also cannot simply purchase the item from the Friends menu, and have to endure another loading screen to travel to their friend's campsite just to access the box. This has been revised a bit, as later updates let the player view and buy from their friends' Market Box inventory in their entirety, but there's still the lack of a search function.
- Starting with version 1.2.0, animals can now request flowers for their Fetch Quest. The garden is already polarizing to players to begin with. While thankfully they only request basic flowers whose seeds can be easily bought from Lloid, keep in mind that without flower food they take at least a cycle (3 hours) to grow and the only other way of obtaining them without gardening relies on complete randomness from the occasional item balloons. Also, flowers cannot be sold in Market Boxes unlike other request items, so players are left on their own when it comes to this type of request. It also cannot be skipped, as whenever an animal requests one, it is always the third request, so if you want to use Request Tickets on them, no such usage for you until you fulfill that particular request!
- Farming caps, a unique currency exclusive to the OK Motors. The only way of farming them is by playing the Brake Tapper machine (requires friend powder). Most of the time you will only obtain 5 caps per win, unless a Big Bonus is happening, giving you either 30 or, rarely, 50 caps upon winning. These caps can then be traded for items like crafting items, clothing, and furniture, but here's the problem: The insanely high cap requirement for the better items, including essences. See the amount you can obtain per win? One bottle of essence alone costs 250 caps (same for the clothing)! Want the OK Motors furniture? Prepare for massive grinding, because the cap requirement is in the thousands. Even if you manage to consistently trigger the Big Bonus each play (and win them all), the ridiculous prices make the whole thing way too tedious for many players to bother, often being ignored except by the "true and honest" completionists. At least for the crafting materials, the caps needed for exchange have been significantly lowered in Complete, but the grind remains the same for the exclusive clothing and furniture.
- Some furniture occupy space much bigger than what it appears to be. So, you have players complain that a tea-party balloon that appears to be able to occupy one tile turning out to occupy 2x2 worth of space, calling it a terrible decision from Nintendo's part.
- Even after the update expanding the decorating space for the campsite, players ended up annoyed by much of the lefthand side of it being unable to be decorated due to the camper and the path to the garden taking it up. Heck, players are annoyed that there is not even an option to remove the camper from the campsite area entirely.
- The gacha / fortune cookie system is Pocket Camp's lootbox mechanic, with all the annoyances that come with it. Want a specific piece of furniture? You might never get it, even after opening numerous cookies!
- For the duration of all three major events in a month, the Happy Homeroom Academy will open up an event room with three difficulty tiers that must be completed from easiest to hardest. In the Garden and Fishing Tourney rooms, they all can be completed fully by acquiring every event item/furniture at least once. Moreso, the items needed for all the HHA rooms of an event can be earned for free with very minimal, if any, Leaf Tickets, provided the player has friends to assist during the Garden Event and fishes often during the Fishing Tourney. This is not the case for Gyrodite event rooms, in which the third and final room, ontop of needing everything available with the respective Gyrodite will require purchasing one, or sometimes even more than one of, the premium Leaf Ticket items to get the highest score. The premium items are not cheap either, running at least above 100 Leaf Tickets. You can still pass this room with a three-star rating, however, if you happen to own high-scoring items that trigger "Good Eye!" when placed.
- Some Happy Homeroom Academy rooms require items bought at the Market Place, which is completely random on what is stocked and available for purchase from the appeal vendors and Tommy and Timmy Nook. Other event HHA rooms, disregarding the rooms themed around a specific premium cookie, require items won from generic Fortune Cookies to pass with perfect scores, which are also completely random. Even worse, you could end up with a room that requires an item that in turn needs a high enough friendship level with a villager. If not already unlocked by the time the event room comes around, and if you cannot find a suitable replacement that generates a "Good Eye!" reaction, it'll be impossible to get the full three medals from that room without shelling out Leaf Tickets before the event ends and the room closes.
- Hanging and ceiling furniture are treated just the same as any other furniture, unlike in Happy Home Designer. This means that such furniture takes up floor space and thus no items can be placed under it, limiting room design creativity.
- For the clothes equivalent, the limited categories mean that hats and wigs can not be mixed together and some accessories are awkwardly grouped together in one category (like neckwear belonging to the back accessory category). In Complete, it is not even possible to mix facial accessories with custom design tattoos.
- For all the hype the Complete version got, players were eventually quick to feel annoyed over the following mechanics applicable to this version:
- The 7-day limit of online save backup storage, not to mention that a player can only create a new backup every day, as the nature of mobile phones means it can be unpredictable as to what will happen to the device at any given time. Keep in mind that saves in Complete are stored locally, and will disappear if the app is uninstalled. Google locking down Android's data directory (where the save files are stored) access only makes this more bothersome, and it is impossible to access it directly on iOS. Players ended up resorting to some workarounds to have their own backup. What baffled the players more is that the game does still require online connectivity to play (as in phoning the servers frequently for authentication), so why the cloud save backup is built like this is a mystery to the players.
- Speaking of online connectivity, the monthly reauthentication itself, the discussion of which already showing signs of the community's Broken Base. Players expecting an offline game only to learn of the online DRM began to voice their concerns about it as they feared of a second shutdown because of the servers being taken off eventually unless Nintendo removes this mechanic entirely.
- The custom designs requiring MyNintendo connectivity just to get them, even ones not the player's own, instead of giving an option to design them in-game. The latter aspect also means that the player can only rely on what codes are available in public (and for paths, good luck finding designs properly tagged with that category, as they otherwise will not work), and designing a new one themselves will require some tedium of booting up Animal Crossing: New Horizons first, and don't even bother if the player does not have the game, let alone a Nintendo Switch Online sub. If a player does not want to bother with this, this will also prevent 100% Completion on the Stretch Goals as well, as one of them requires saving a custom design.
- The removal of online interactions means getting additional items or especially help with gardening becomes slower. Items from Whistle Pass can only be gotten from 1 friend per day and garden event sharing is only done one-way from a random friend and only up to a few creatures every few hours. This also makes friend powder even more elusive, as garden events in the online version tend to reward more due to friend powder being rewarded from the player sharing caught creatures, a feature not available in Complete.
- During Scavenger Hunts, Shovelstrike Quarry will always offer gyroidites due to the quarry only changing rewards every day instead of half-day, and the gyroidites are prioritized to encourage players to complete the event. This screws over players that are in need of some other material, and makes them feel dragged out due to the easiness of the event combined with the 10-day duration.
- A friend at Whistle Pass may refuse to help the player enter Shovelstrike Quarry. This happens at random and the player has to chat with this same friend for another attempt and hope he/she accepts.
- The very limited cap of 40 custom designs (20 for clothing, 20 for decoration) bothers players that love to incorporate a lot of custom designs, especially for paths. At least the paths can be rotated, unlike in New Horizons, thus not needing to import the other ones that face differently.
- There is no search function for the Complete Item Catalog, meaning players have to waste time scrolling just to pick an item they want, and that is before figuring out which category the item belongs to. This is more aggravating with the Premium Collection category with its 1,000+ items.
- The Complete Item Catalog also does not have a Preview button for clothing, leaving players unsure of whether the clothing they picked is suitable if said clothing is currently not in the monthly rotation or Cyrus' offering.
- Sweetness Aversion: Despite not being any different from other Animal Crossing games aesthetic-wise, some players still complain about having too much "cutesy" content (emphasis on "cute"-based or "hip"-based content, especially events) in this game. The "hip" theme, represented by the color orange and a mushroom, gets this the most due to its overly whimsical, sugary (yet trippy) J-Pop-esque theme. Players also noticed how much of the available clothes are skewed in favor of the female players, said clothes having a tendency to fall into this theme as well.
- Tainted by the Preview:
- Despite the announcement of the offline version being more well-received by the general Nintendo community (considering live service games' notoriety of rendering everything inaccessible once they reach end-of-service), active Pocket Camp players were miffed by the offline version being stripped of its Socialization Bonus which was the reason for their engagement. The offline version being a one-time purchase was also seen as tasteless to go with the online game's end of service as the game previously inexplicably held a massive Leaf Ticket sale on July, a good few months prior to the end of service, instead of around Black Friday as it usually would.Explanation This was softened by that version's announcement video by Nintendo Mobile that addressed various differences between the apps (including a different take on Socialization Bonus), but some players would still miss visiting others' campsites.
- The announcement that all collaboration items (Mario, Splatoon, Sanrio (including the special animals), etc.) not already kept in a player's inventory would not carry over to Complete already annoyed players that missed out all the events by then, not helped by how many of them are either one-time or cost a lot of Leaf Tickets, with some of the Splatoon items and many of the Sanrio items being locked behind fortune cookies.
- That One Sidequest:
- Applicable to the online version only is clearing the special Washed-Up Wonders Isle after the suggested export item was no longer available. Many players had questioned where to find said item, the communicator parts, when they were only available for five days on November 2020 yet the special island still remained after the event until the shutdown. Worse, this is the only island where the golden package is not a suggested export, and it requires 500 export points for a single trip, which requires a lot of items otherwise. This was rather cruel, as it housed some event fortune cookies, which were harder to come by if the player was not a whale.
- It has been agreed by many players that they found the Sunday daily goals to be the most tedious, as they require fulfilling campsite requests which only appear every 3 hours since the last pop-up, not per cycle, thus no way to bypass it like how one would use fertilizers for fruit-related goals, nets for fishing, etc. Special requests still do count toward the goal, but there is only a finite number of them. And no, missing item requests do not count.
- Reaching Ultimate 200, especially in Complete. It is the highest Happy Homeroom rank, which requires around 7,000-ish Medals, but this requires the player to be active throughout the online version's lifecycle and whale through the fortune cookie event classes to obtain enough Medals before the online game ended. Complete makes this worse, as the Event classes have been removed and only one Lottie Challenge shows up per month. Reaching that coveted max rank in this state can take years to accomplish.
- Some of the gift-exclusive items became special Whistle Pass presents in Complete, which seem to be a neat compensation for players that missed them out in the online version. However, trying to collect all of them legitimately in Complete is this. For one, they are not listed in the Catalog, so the player needs to look them up and build their own checklist. Secondly, they are only given out within certain timeframe (for example, the chocolate bars in the first two weeks of February, as lead-up to Valentine's Day). Thirdly, it is still possible to get duplicates, thus wasting a day if the player got a gift item they already have. This adds up to requiring potentially years to collect all of them. Perhaps the worst set is the Toy Day cards. There are only three of them, which should be easy enough, however they are only given away within the narrowest timeframe among all presents — the day before and of Christmas, meaning players that started fresh or missed them out completely in the online version can not collect them all in a single year, and that is before considering the higher chance of duplicates due to the smaller item pool.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- Many players aren't happy with the change to the guest animal interaction mechanic where they can only chat to a certain number of animals and do only one request in their campsite every three hours (introduced in version 1.1.0), compared to the older mechanic where players could chat with all guest animals every hour and do up to three requests every few hours.
- They also aren't happy with the previously mentioned lootbox-like gacha / fortune cookie system.
- Want to meet some new animals? In previous versions, any animals that were introduced through updates could be instantly met (either through discovering them at one of the four main areas or using a Calling Card) provided you're at the proper level. In more recent updates since late 2019, you have to give items to Gulliver and hope he returns from one of his cruises around the world with a random map containing an animal, then spend essence to have Blathers explore the map. Keep in mind this is the only way animal maps can be received outside of rare themed goals, and luck can be against you and result in Gulliver not returning with a villager map. Of course once you get the maps, you have to complete them. How much does it cost for one roll of the dice? Between 6 and 12 essence of the animal's theme, which are rare and hard to come by. You're better off just cheesing the map and paying five Leaf Tickets to instantly get your reward.
- The change from collecting special crafting materials from villagers to instead finding them in the overworld during monthly Gyrodite events. The latter is easily more time consuming unless you regularly visit the Shovelstrike Quarry.
- In February 2019, with the introduction of Blathers' Treasure Maps, Limited Goals' Material, Essence, and Bell rewards were changed from giving the rewards outright to giving maps containing the rewards instead, requiring you to spend Bells or Friend Powder just to get the rewards. Later events toned down the presence of Maps, instead offering them alongside regular full items.
- As if Gulliver couldn't get any worse, September 11th, 2019 brought an overhaul to Gulliver. The good news is he can now go out on three different voyages at once on three different islands, some normal and some golden. The bad news is he now demands specific items of any quality instead of any ten furniture/clothing based on the island's description, meaning you can't simply give him duplicates and unwanted items unless they're required, which not only leaves your only option being to sell said items for pitiful amounts of Bells, it defeats the whole purpose of Gulliver to begin with. Additionally, Villager maps can only be found on golden islands which require large quantities of specific items (including the elusive Golden Furniture, which cost a million bells just to craft) or special Gulliver-exclusive packages and crates crafted with highly rare and expensive materials (essences, Sparkle Stones, etc.). And even then you still may be left with an Undesirable Prize as a reward if you don't pick the correct souvenir, unless you use Leaf Tickets to grab multiple items in one trip. As such, it was criticized as being heavily unbalanced, only favorable to Whales who spend lots of money on the game. The devs quickly acknowledged that the revamp fell short, and modified it in November 2019 so that you can use any item in a shipment, reduced the shipment point requirements, and shortened trip times.
- The Complete version axing the Event classes in Happy Homeroom in favor of leaving only the Lottie Challenges was seen as a harsh blow to new players (or ones that did not bother with HH much on the online version) as there is only a finite amount of normal classes to get new Medals from. As further insult, the max rank, Ultimate 200, rewards one last Golden Collection craftable, the gold rice bales.Why is this important? This was to the point where some players started e-mailing Nintendo over this issue.
- A minor one, but players were disappointed to see that the in-game characters no longer recognize the player's birthday in Complete. The game does not prompt the player into inputting their birth date and the minimum use of MyNintendo integration (where user accounts have their birth date set) make Complete players lose out a unique interaction. The closest a player can replicate is by placing a birthday sticker on the planner, and the animal on the planner screen will acknowledge it, but it is not the same.
- Another minor one, but caused confusion nonetheless. There had been increased frequency of questions within the fan community about why an event scheduled that day is not running yet since the shift to Complete. Turns out, while the event stated on the planner does start that day, it actually starts later due to time zone difference. The online version used to state the local time an event actually would start, which is absent in Complete.
- Players that were used to the frequent announcements in the online version found themselves bored easily after Complete made every monthly seasonal item on offer available for the whole month instead of spreading out every few days as they felt it reduced their motivation to Play Every Day. Also goes with It's the Same, Now It Sucks! issue regarding repeat events as seeing everything immediately available (bar the main events) that month, especially stuff players have already unlocked before, reduced further incentive.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- With the final batch of event fortune cookies revealed, players found certain Ensemble Dark Horse or otherwise animals with interesting themes to be snubbed out of a cookie set. Examples from the former include Pietro, Merengue, Tangy, and Ankha, among other popular picks.Potential theme details Example from the latter includes Tucker (for a potential dinosaur-themed set).
- For special characters, players are disappointed to see certain characters missing from the game entirely. Most noticeable is series mainstay Phyllis, even though her sister Pelly appears as an event host and has her own special furniture.
- Underused Game Mechanic:
- Despite having an Event tab for Honey use, there has never been any event Honey released, let alone a Fishing Tourney-esque event. All known bug-catching events are just the "<Species> Goals" type of event, which does not require event Honey for mass catching the featured bugs, used as filler between the main events.
- OK Motors is woefully underused. Once the player pays off all the loans, there is not much to do at the area as it only offers camper designs and houses the Scrappy Mechanic that is Brake Tapper. New camper designs were rolled out rarely throughout the game's 7-year lifespan (only reaching 28 unique designs after seven years of updates, with several left Dummied Out), while Brake Tapper requires precise timing to win consistantly and grinding to get all the exclusive items, which most players tend to dismiss unless they need them for Happy Homeroom. With events never revolving around this area otherwise (though it can spawn gyroidites during Scavenger Hunt events, like most other areas), players satisfied with their camper have little reason to visit. Even Giovanni as a wandering merchant is useless, as he only functions as a shortcut to the camper customization menu with no other benefits.
- The camper itself is also underutilized. In other Animal Crossing games, home loans are the primary motivator to keep going, and paying it off forms the "story" of the game. In Pocket Camp, all loans in total only amount to 790,000 bells; the only game with cheaper loans is the original N64 game, where money was overall a lot harder to make than it is in the newer games. To put this into perspective: the latest main series game at the time of Pocket Camp's release was Animal Crossing: New Leaf, where all of the loans cost 7,600,000 bells, almost ten times as much. Adding onto this is that a max-size camper has two floors that are only 5x8 full-size blocks in size, making it debatablynote the smallest player housing in the entire franchise.
- Flower Festival is the only event that involves cross-pollination instead of the usual rare creatures. It does not help that it is a collaboration event that is never rerun again.
- Roses and dandelions were introduced much later in the game but nothing was really done with them, as each can only produce one other non-starting variant through crosspollination, even though other variants already existed in New Leaf.
- Refurbishing items into a different style returns from Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but the number of compatible items have been drastically reduced. Some series returning from New Leaf (such as the Rococo series) are entirely incompatible. Others, like the Kiddie series, only have one of its two refurbishing options available. Even if a series does have some of its items refurbishable, it isn't guaranteed that all of them will; only four of the Kiddie series' ten items can be refurbished, meaning if you want to decorate with the alternate style, you'll have to either mix-and-match with the normal set or leave it permanently incomplete. The worst offender is the Modern series; it had four different color options in New Leaf, but only Gray is available in Pocket Camp - and only for the table, for some reason. The exclusion is even more bizarre because most refurbishable items are reused from New Leaf, meaning they already had completed models and textures for the missing items that could be ported over.
- Event amenities are rarely ever implemented, with only a total of 5 (counting both levels of Snow Park) being released after the seven-year run, 2 of them being collab-only. And as noted, only the Snow Park is upgradeable, while all other amenities are only available in their level 1 form. Considering how all of them are basically reskinned versions of existing amenities, the idea of the event amenities itself felt more like an afterthought.
- When it comes to fortune cookies, certain cookies have unique gimmicks that are not seen in any other cookie since.
- Very few Memories from 5-star items feature special characters, and only one cookie (Isabelle's café cookie) stars a special character.
- Apollo's cinema cookie is the only one containing less than ten items, so much so that it was even initially released without a Memory.
- The inverse of the above, Bob's circus cookie, is the only one containing more than ten (11 in this case).
- The Dazzling Duo Cookie uses the gimmick theme of the rabbit sisters Chrissy and Francine, even though the two ended up having their own cookie set each. No other cookie has a unique relationship theme like this.
- Inkling's splatted cookie is the only one to feature two 5-star items.
- The Elegant Kimono, Tasteful Kimono, and Wig Collection cookies are the only cookie sets not only to not be tied to any specific character, but also the only ones to contain existing items (in this case, from the various premium collections already released earlier).
- The Sanrio Characters Cookie marks the only time a collaboration released an additional cookie set after the initial, character-based six. For comparison, the Splatoon 2 collab only has the aforementioned splatted cookie as its cookie set.
- Neckwear type of "back piece" (as the in-game category calls it) is barely usable for animals due to most of them relying heavily on straps and dependent on the Player Character's fixed human body type that it would presumably require extra work to take account of every animal's varying appearance and size (and keep in mind that actual backwear with straps already have the straps removed when worn by animals as compromise). There are only six neckwear usable by animals, and only because they are simply pieces stuck to the animal's chest without other dependencies.The items are...
- Similarly, there is only a small pool of usable Blush Sticker accessories for animals, and animals can not benefit from tattoo-based accessories at all. Even blushes that may appear to be usable (as in just adding color, not stuff like freckles) turn out to not be this for some reason.
- Values Dissonance:
- Look at any February preview from the game's official social media profile and notice how English-speakers tend to voice their complains over its tendency to be themed brown instead of other colors typically associated with Valentine's Day. This is because in Japan, the holiday itself is more symbolized with chocolate, which women give to men that day there, and it also becomes more relevant come White Day later on March where the opposite happens.
- Again from English-speaking players, their complaints about there being very limited variations of certain hairstyles (particularly African American styles). Pocket Camp, despite being a global release, was primarily developed for Japanese audience first and foremost, hence why most available hairstyles/wigs and cultural references are more Japanese-oriented. For comparison, the later New Horizons is more globalized, hence more variety. The same can be said for certain players that do not like the harmonious seasonal themes which tend to dominate certain months, or as mentioned on Sweetness Aversion, the smaller percentage of male clothes available due the game's major demographic being women.
- Win Back the Crowd: Fans who had grown tired of the game in its online version came back to check it out when Complete was announced, as it would convert what was previously an online Freemium title with into an offline Premium microtransaction-free experience.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/AnimalCrossingPocketCamp
Go To
