I think the game is pretty fun and addictive but the material cost differences between similar items are absolutely bonkers. It makes me not to want to bother grinding out the gameplay cycle for later items.
Yeah, Level 22 now, and this is why I'm probably going to start putting it aside. It's crazy how fast the grind ramps up. Like, for the first few villagers, the things they want only take like a minute to craft. Then it jumps up to 3 minutes. Then after that, the next tier goes all the way to 3-8 hours per item. Fine, that' something I really don't mind. I can put up with that. Same with the increased friendship requirements. At first, they only required level 3 friendship to move in. Then in ramped up to 5. Now it's up to 7. That's also silly, and is a bit more annoying, but whatever.
But like, I just got access to Alfonso. And not only does he suffer from those two problems, but just look at what he wants from me and what it costs in terms of materials:
Grass Standee: 30 Preserves, 3 Friend Powder
Pastel-Dot Rug: 30 Cotton
Kiddie Chair: 30 Steel
Kiddie Dresser:
90 Wood, 90 Steel
Tree Standee:
120 Wood, 3 Cute Essence
And I'm basically at the "midpoint" of the game right now, at Level 22. I can only assume it gets worse from here. Like, of course I could keep doing it... But it's very clear it's ramping up to be a grind just for the sake of being a grind, and not any rhyme or logical reason other than trying to entice you to buy leaf tickets and whatever. Like, just look at the cost for the Tree Standee alone, nevermind the other stuff: 120 of a material for just one item. And put together, to get Alfonso, what this means is what you have to gather is:
210 Wood, 120 Steel, 30 Cotton, 30 Preserves, 3 Friend Powder, 3 Cute Essence
It's not hard to get even that amount of material, but it's basically using everything I get from at least 1-2 days of playing just on him, nevermind anyone else. It just doesn't feel worth it anymore and is way, way too much of a grind at this point.
And this ties into another one of the complaints I have, compared to traditional Animal Crossing games. In traditional Animal Crossing games, you either buy the furniture you want from the Tom Nook/the Nooklings, get them as rewards for fulfilling requests for your villagers sometimes, or trading with other players. Here, everything is based around crafting (other than the tiny selecting Timmy/Tommy has everyday, which seem to mostly be their own thing). And not only that, but to unlock more crafting stuff, you have to keep uping your level--you don't just have access to whatever from the start. And so, instead of furniture and decorating mostly being a thing for you and decorating your home and stuff, like it is in previous Animal Crossing titles, here furniture's main purpose is just to recruit other villagers to your campsite. And so, that results in the problem of, instead of just crafting the furniture you want, all three of my crafting slots are all going to stuff other villagers want to get them into my campsite. There's nothing really left for me at all.
Of course, there's a caveat to that... Because of the way the game works, it seems there's at least one Villager who wants any given piece of crafted furniture. So eventually, you'll still work your way around to crafting stuff that you like when you get to the villager that wants that stuff. But nonetheless, it's still not a fun way of playing it. Because it turns one of the cool things about Animal Crossing (one of my favorite parts anyway), finding cool furniture and decorating your home, or in this case, your campsite/camper the way you want, and turns it into part of the bar-filling gameplay loop instead. Instead of being cool and for you and whatever (particularly when awesome stuff happens like Animals just surprising you with a cool piece of furniture as a reward--that's just completely absent here, beyond them giving you a particular crafting recipe for a particular friendship level--not even the item itself as a reward, just a recipe for it, and it's just one thing for villager, preset and the same for everyone, which takes any surprise element out of it and makes those rewards themselves something you have to grind for if you want to actually make them), it's just another part of the daily grind and filling bars and stuff, and that takes all the fun and magic out of it.
And then when you add the increasing grind each of the times these villagers ask for on top of that... it's just way too souless, empty, and cynical for me. Like, I know Animal Crossing games are at their core errand simulators. But this game just takes that to the extreme and rips the personality and charm out of it. No writing villagers letters, no fossils, no gardening, no museums, no gyroids, no weather (and thus also no umbrellas or anything like that), no Animals giving you anything other than Bells or Crafting Materials as rewards (that is, no clothing or furniture or anything as rewards for completing a task) and the coolest part of Animal Crossing, getting furniture and customizing your place as you like, instead of being cool like that and cool stuff being able to be found just by chance all the time, all the main pieces of furniture just being tied to the crafting system and only being able to be obtained through it and not so much as traded or sold to other people or anything, just completely tied as a fundamental part of the basic loop of this bar-filling, cyclical, completely empty and soulless take of an Animal Crossing that reduces every single thing to the level of Cookie Clicker.
At first, I was somehow having fun. But now that I've got to this point and see how quickly this stuff ramps up, it's just not for me.
And before someone says it, I know some of my problems could be solved by just not bothering to request villagers to actually come to my campsite at all, and just focusing purely on requests. But the problem with that is, is that in order to keep getting more furniture added to the crafting catalog to get the stuff I'd actually want to put in my campsite/camper, I have to keep raising my character's level. Which means being able to raise my villagers' levels. Which, due to the friendship caps, means having to craft Amenities so I can raise the cap and keep raising their friendship to keep raising my own level. Which means doing the same thing anyway because I'm sure just like with furniture, the higher level of amenities require stupid amounts of materials as well. And until they're finished, not much else to do.
This game just takes everything I love about Animal Crossing and makes it so boring and empty instead. Probably not going to be coming back unless I REALLY get that bored one day and just really want any kind of even vague facsimile of Animal Crossing bug catching/fishing. Otherwise, just bleh... This post went on longer than I intended for it too, but just had to get all of that out I guess.
