Since Day One

So today I started New Leaf. It’s a tremendous experience, already clearly the best entry in the series. I called my town Emlyn, because I live (well, lived, I’ve moved house in reality today too) in Emlyn Gardens. I thought it would be… well, not appropriate. Interesting, maybe? Only it’s not interesting. Ah well, that’s my reason for the name.

I had a glance at all four possible maps before I picked one. I was interested to see what was available. I’d decided that I wouldn’t reset unless I got a string of really poor options. My ideal town would have had Re-Tail, the town hall and the square all very close to the station. After that I was Keen to have the town hall and the square close to one another. It feels od for them to be far apart.

The first map I looked at was the one I went with. It’s the first of the four shown below.

 

 

I was met at the station by Rolf, Bud, and Marcie. My other two villagers are Marcel (who I think is supposed to be French) and Chrissy. I was pleased to see Rolf and Bud's pretty cool. I'm fairly indifferent to the rest. Hopefully I'll get Limberg soon. He's one of my favourites.

 

 

For the first time ever in an Animal Crossing town I got something other than peaches as my town fruit. I got pears. From reading around message boards over the last couple of weeks I realise they’re probably the most unpopular fruit. I don’t care. I’m pleased to have something, anything, that’s not a peach.

I still wound up with peaches though. As I was asking Isabelle for jobs she handed over a punnet of peaches, telling me her mother sent them to her and told her to share (because that’s what “good puppies” do).

 

I planted them and then pestered some Isabelle some more, eventually getting a net because I told her I’d like to hunt insects. That wasn’t true: I’m much more interested in getting fish because they seem more varied. Nookling Junction had already sold me a fishing rod though. I knew Isabelle would hand over a net if I lied. So there you go. Lying gets you what you want.

  

 

Truth be told I’ve not done anything noteworthy in Emlyn today. I quickly paid off my debt, missed out on a few balloons, and then did loads of fishing and bug catching to build up a nice wad of bells. In the end I did manage to down two balloons by being at the cliff at the right time.

 

And that was my first day in Emlyn. Nintendo, you’ve done a great job.

Prologue

On June 14^th Animal Crossing: New Leaf will be released for the 3DS. Chances are that if you’re reading this you’re already well aware of what the Animal Crossing series entails. But the perfectionist (or perhaps completest, but neither feels like the right word) in me feels there should be an explanation here. So here goes…

In a nutshell the Animal Crossing series sees you create an on-screen version of yourself and move into a small town of anthropomorphic animals. There’s no right or wrong way to play the game and no definitive mission statement, although paying off your mortgage and cultivating friendships with the animal-headed townsfolk are pretty important aspects of playing. There’s also a museum to be stocked with fish, insects, fossils (which are surprisingly abundant), and artwork.

Time progresses in synchronization with real life, so if you play at night it’s night in the game and when you play in December there’s snow on the ground and fairy lights on some of the trees. There are even (slightly rejigged) holidays present in all but the DS version, as well as monthly contests and made-up holidays.

To the uninitiated it can sound dull. In truth it’s difficult to sum up exactly what the series’ appeal is. But there is one.

I’ve played every game in the series so far. I was so desperate to play the Gamecube version that I bought a Freeloader disc and a US copy so that I could play it without having to wait for the UK release. I can’t recall how much that cost me no. I assume it was a lot.

I loved the game and played it solidly for nearly a year before becoming bored. It was caused by a combination of my favourite villager (Limberg) finally moving away, paying off my final mortgage, filling the museum, and experiencing every in-game holiday I was interested. There was nothing left to do. I’d seen and done everything I wanted to.

Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS rolled around a while later and I bought a US version of that too. I played solidly but not for the year of the original. I didn’t enjoy it as much. The reality-inspired hols of the original game were replaced by a line-up of uninspired fictional ones. I still earned myself a swanky mansion but I didn’t enjoy the experience as much. I missed the train tracks too.

I played City Folk but there wasn’t enough new content included to keep me interested. I don’t remember how far I got but I remember thinking it was the most unimpressive game in the series. There was particularly exciting going on and there were once again no train tracks anywhere in town.

Thankfully New Leaf looks to have righted all the wrongs of City Folk (with the exception of getting rid of the irritating grass depletion dynamic that sees grass dying the more you walk on it). A swarm of new characters have been revealed, the trains are back, and you’re now able to customise the town as a whole rather than just the innards of your house. From what I’ve seen there’s plenty on offer to keep people playing long after getting that large mansion. It looks like the series finally realising its massive potential.

The purpose of this blog is to provide an account of my experiences with the game. I thought it would make an interesting experiment. There’s not going to be any faux first person narrative here: I’m not going to pretend that I’ve actually moved into the town. That seems to be a popular approach from what I’ve seen but I don’t care for it and I don’t think I could keep it up either. I’d end up slipping. This will be my experience as a player, providing thoughts on everything the game comes up with.

So… bring on day one.