Hi, my name is Jeremy and I'm an Animal Crossing addict. My story begins with the release of the wildly original game on the Gamecube in the latter half of 2002. I was instantly pulled in and could not escape it's grasp for many weeks. As one might expect the game does get quite old, but I've been victim to completely random gaming sessions with it ever since it's release. The reason the game can't keep my attention for more than a few weeks at a time lies within a couple design faults. You really run out of things to do, and because the game runs realtime using the system's clock it's sometimes impossible to find time during the day to sit down and play. I always thought to myself that the game would be a perfect fit on a handheld console out of convenience. This is why I was happy to see it not only announced for the Nintendo DS, but also revealed as one of the first online games for the handheld. Do these two differences fix the problems from the past formula? Read on to find out.
The Nintendo DS is the perfect environment for the Animal Crossing concept so much that I can't imagine going back and playing the game on the Gamecube ever again. The game is meant to be played for about fifteen minutes at a time. It's a very easy game to just jump in for a few minutes and turn off, which is why it's the only DS game I play while riding the city bus. Heck, I even have loaded it up while walking. It's a very rewarding experience to check up on your village each day, and now that it's portable you don't have to wait until you get home. This is easily the best new feature to the series, but it's far from being the only one. The game greatly benefits from having the touch screen useable, and don't even get me started on the online multi-player. At least not yet, I'll get to it later in the review.
Story
There's no real storyline to Animal Crossing: Wild World due to the nature of this creation. Basically you begin as a youth moving out on their own for the first time. The game starts with you in the back of a car with the familiar Kapp'n from the last game driving you to the village of which you will take up residency. Through a series of questions your character's name, physical appearance, and house location are all determined. Upon arriving in town you're offered a house to live, but at a high price. Not to worry as the local shop owner is willing to throw you a bone and even give you an extremely temporary job. Your character is not the only resident as the game chooses three random animals to live alongside you, but more will come and go as you play through each day.
After you finish your jobs with good ol' Tom Nook you can begin to make your own story. First of all you'll want to begin conversing with the various residents of your village. You can shoot the breeze with them, or do something a bit more productive by doing them various favors for which you will be rewarded with furniture, items, and bell (the currency in Animal Crossing). There's no ultimate objective to complete and so it's really up to you to make the experience interesting. There's certainly a lot there to occupy your time with and while most of it is in obvious tasks, you can find some more subtle ways to have fun within the game's world. Unlike most games Animal Crossing: Wild World requires some gameplay creativity whilst playing.
Gameplay
Animal Crossing is touted by Shigeru Miyamoto as a 'communication game'. This holds very true, though it can get very old communicating with the various computer controlled animals. The game goes beyond this though in basically throwing your character into a living situation in a world where there's always something to do. In Animal Crossing Wild World you first take residency in a small (and not so cozy) home where you'll first want to earn Bells (the currency in the game's world). You'll want to do this to pay off the debt to Tom Nook for your home, and upon doing so, the house in question will be upgraded in various ways. At first this may seem to be a neverending affair, with a fresh debt each time the living quarters are upgraded. There's no real outlined goal in game besides this, but there's a ton to do during and after you complete it.
The debt paying element is only a tiny, miniscule portion of what you'll be doing in the game. You can make friends with your villagers, fish, catch bugs, and pretty much explore the ins and outs of your village. What's more is that it's up to you to furnish your house in any way you seem fit. Collecting the various pieces of furniture, wallpaper, and flooring is a big part of what makes Animal Crossing Wild World so fun. Unless you spend many a day with this game you won't soon find yourself acquiring every item this game has to offer because there is just so much. What's more is the fact that the game features a board to rate your home decor setup known as the Happy Room Academy (or HRA). They will rate it according to points you earn and though there is a certain reasoning to how you're rated you will still want to try out different arrangements and combinations. You can even completely ignore the HRA and just make a set up that you like.
Upon starting the game your town will be given three randomized animal residents that you'll be living amongst. It's your job to keep them happy by doing them favors, writing them letters, and just talking to them on a daily basis. What's really cool is the fact that more villagers will randomly move into your town as the days pass, and any resident animal can move out at any given time. Also cool is the fact that when you write to your neighbors they'll often respond back with their own letters. This is the whole communication aspect. Adding to this is that the animals keep all letters you've written them, and they're prone to share them with any other human players that they encounter, even if they've moved to a friends village they'll still keep all of the writing and even remember your character.
The main way to gain new items and furniture is by doing animals favors around the town. Often times you'll simply be talking to them and they'll give you a request, sometimes something so small as bringing them a rare piece of fruit. This is the easiest and most direct way to obtain furniture outside of simply buying it from Tom Nook. Everyone loves collecting things, and the whole collect-a-thon approach taken here is one of Animal Crossing Wild World's most addictive elements. This also makes for some cool trading possibilities with other human players you may encounter in the world. One thing I've noticed about this version in particular is the fact that you cannot outright ask the villagers if they need a favor anymore, and this is a drawback because it often requires you to speak to them several times before they bring it up.
As I already mentioned one of the best things about Animal Crossing Wild World is that it's portable. The game runs off your DS' internal clock to a tee. This means that if it's 1 pm in real life, than it also is in the game and everything changes real time. Certain characters are only around for certain amounts of time, and Tom Nook's shop is not open all night long. This feature in the Gamecube version really screwed things up for those who are out all day and can only play during the nighttime because there's really not all that much going on in the evening hours. Now you can simply carry around your game and play it whenever you're out and about. This makes the game a lot more fun because now that you don't have to be home to play you'll be given many more opportunities to see the happenings in your villages.
Like the time and season, there are also holidays which are determined by which day your DS' clock has. On top of this, certain merchants (and even a hair stylist) will only visit your town on certain days at certain times and it's actually pretty exciting sometimes to load up the game each day to see if there's anything new amiss in your town. Animal Crossing Wild World really feels like it plays itself while the game is turned off even. You don't control everything in your town and this helps to make it feel like your character simply exists in it. One cool aspect is that you do in fact have a fair amount of control over how your village looks. It's up to you to pull weeds, plant flowers, chop down trees, and even plant new ones. The sense of each village being different (besides having different layouts) is heightened by this individual control you have over what's growing in it.
Adding further to this feeling is the fact that no two villages will be exactly alike. The basic design is randomized when you first start. This makes things feel especially fresh in the world as restarting will give you a different experience. Furthermore there are several varieties of fruit trees. You can grow peaches, pears, cherries, apples or oranges, but only one fruit is native to your village. This means that you'll have to acquire the other varieties of fruit from outside sources, and then you can plant the whole fruit into the ground to grow a tree. I don't know why this fruit growing aspect is so deliriously addictive, but I'm a bit obsessed with featuring peaches as a native plant in any village I start and it's no difference here.
Customization goes even beyond your landscape, as you can draw your own designs for shirts in the game. This is one feature that the touch screen is used for, and this works quite a bit better than I expected. Furthermore, various villagers can pick up on a design you've made and even wear it which makes for some rather hilarious moments sometimes. You can also adjust the village's theme, and give your villagers new sayings to use in their speech. New to the series with this game is the ability to draw your own constellations in the sky with the touch screen. While not something I find particularly fun, I'm sure others will think it's a neat feature. The game basically asks you to come up with some original ideas, and you'll find that Animal Crossing Wild World is a more rewarding experience when you express a little creativity here and there.
Now we come to multiplayer. This is easily the biggest aspect of the game, and so if you don't have the means to take the game online and don't have any friends with DS systems I'd suggest not getting this one. I mean seriously, what's the point of drawing cool designs for shirts, writing letters to your neighbors, and furnishing your house if there's nobody to see it? There are several methods for playing with friends. Firstly, if you own only one copy of the game you can share the village with another player. The only drawback to this is the fact that you can't both play at the same time. If your friends own DS units and copies of the game than you can all get together real-time in one of your villages. If you're looking to take it to the next level though, you can go online.
The first thing I've got to say about the online mode is that I'm extremely disappointed in how limited it is. Before players can even come to your village (or before you can go to their's) you need to exchange friends codes and add each other to your friends lists. From there you must open the gates of your town, and then they can enter. Once they're visiting there's not a whole lot to do. You can shoot the breeze by chatting, fish, and catch bugs together but that's about it. The only really cool element of playing online is in trading items, chatting, and exploring someone elses' village. You can also use this opportunity to meet the village's residents, and buy items from Tom Nook that might not be for sale in your own abode. If you get a little creative you can probably think of something funner to do online; like maybe play games or hold fishing tournaments.
There was such huge potential for this game when it comes to online that it's really a shame that it remains virtually untapped. What's more is the fact that Nintendo could have easily added mini-games to the mix and it wouldn't have taken much more development time at all. Another drawback to the online scene is that you actually need a player's friend code before you can enter a village. This makes it nearly impossible to meet new people unless you visit online forums or chat with people who already own the game. While it's not difficult to find someone who is willing to visit your town, it would still have been a lot better if the game featured some sort of online lobby or chatroom. The whole friends code angle seems to have been implemented to protect younger gamers, and the whole system really is a shame.
Animal Crossing Wild World is fun even without online mode though, and because of this I'm not going to rate it lower because of it's poor implementation. Many seem upset with the meager online options, but again it's not a game design that relies on it. Playing online is much more of a novelty than anything, and like with Mario Kart DS, I find it bad that people would actually downplay the title's greatness simply because of it. In it's entirety this is a portable version of Animal Crossing with a few added (and a few lost) features, and on this basis it's best to take it for what it's worth. Though I'm still a little sore about the missing NES games this is a feature that I didn't use often in the original game because I already own almost all of what was offered, but in it's original form.
Graphics, Sound, Controls, and Replayability
The graphics in Animal Crossing: Wild World are slightly dumbed down since the Gamecube version of the game. This is mainly evident in the framerate, which is no longer smooth at all. Some of the basic visual elements were changed for this version. The camera is at more of an angle now, and the world is round. This means that everything scales as you move about, which is a pretty nifty looking effect. The lower screen is the one mostly in use, while the upper screen displays the sky. Upon entering the item screen, your character will be displayed up top. This is admittedly throws you off a bit, but it's not too bad. Even though the graphics don't look as good as they did in the Gamecube version, I'm still quite happy with how this game looks on the DS screens.
The sound quality has also taken a slight fall from the console version of Animal Crossing. It's all composed here in midi form, and though all the songs are happy and upbeat, they never get particularly annoying. Sound effects are pretty decent, with the footsteps from your character as he/she moves about being what you'll hear most of. The various effects are admittedly better than the music, and while the music can at times be catchy, sometimes it's best just to turn down the volume on the DS unit. This really isn't an important aspect of the game for myself, and so I usually don't listen to it at all. K.K. Slider's return promises some cool music, but his first appearance doesn't happen until tonight.
The controls are a bit of an issue here. At first you'll probably try using the D-pad default method of controlling, but you will quickly tire of having to pull out the stylus over and over again for chatting and drawing. Nintendo had a bit of foresight into this, and so they designed a system that allows you to use the stylus for all in game controls. This system feels quite awkward at first, but it now feels like second nature. You can do everything in game with this control method. What I would have wished for is a little more control in the game. I would have loved to be able to use the stylus for special commands while fishing for example. Hopefully Nintendo will integrate some of these ideas into the next version of the game for their Revolution.
While some might not be so quick to agree with me, I feel that this game is infinitely replayable. This holds especially true now that it's on a handheld console. Add to this the ability to play simultaneously with a close by friend, or even to take the game online. There's a ton to collect, and you won't even come close to getting it all for a very long time. Then you've got the seasonal fish and bugs paired with the fact that you've got an entire museum to fill with each species. When you add it all up, this is one of the very few games that you could possibly play for months on end.
Final Recommendation
If you own a DS, and have friends who own this game than I'd say to go for it. This holds especially true if you have the ability to take your DS online, but just don't expect a mindblowing online experience.
Overall Rating: 9.5
Related Review(s):
Nintendo DS Review
France
Germany
United Kingdom
Australia
USA
