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Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival Review Thread

Dryk

Member
I doubt it. The game exists solely to sell amiibos - and it clearly shows. Perhaps AC Plaza started as a real game, but New Leaf success and Wii U failure led Nintendo to think it was best to save the IP for later uses.
The way I interpreted the statements from that interview was that the game doesn't even exist to sell amiibo. It was a cynical ploy to convince corporate to approve amiibo that were always going to sell whether or not there was a game for them.
 

daycru

Member
I'm 12-13 hours deep. It's a neat little game, but I wish it had more effort put into it. No 4th of July or Valentine's Day events? There aren't enough events in general, seems like some more variety wouldn't have been too much to ask, a few games in the style of Katie's high/low card game. Rolling with an amiibo grants a player an extra happiness point, so if you are playing as a human villager you lose ~30 points a game. Very unfair, makes it necessary to have a set of four amiibos.

The card games are hit and miss. I really like the rock, paper, scissors/Whack-A-Mole mash up. Island Escape is cool, a simple survival game with progressively more challenging stages.

Do you love Animal Crossing? Are you excited about seeing Animal Crossing stuff in HD? Do you have a tolerance for cute little toys? Do you have real life human beings to play with? These are all very important questions. Building up the town and leveling up amiibos adds some replay value.

I, daycru, declare Animal Crossing amiibo Festival: a neat little game.
 
I think this thread is a little hyperbolic. The game isn't THAT bad. My wife and I have played at least one round every day since launch and been having fun.
 

Davey Cakes

Member
Hopefully with games like this and Ultra Smash we're just experiencing the burst of desperate shit Nintendo is putting out to keep holiday presence, before they play their real hand next year (and beyond). Nintendo, you're failing your own pedigree with this stuff. Knock it out.

The last thing they need to be doing is fucking up one of their bread-and-butter franchises with this half-assed garbage.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf was a step towards something better. Happy Home Designer is a nice side distraction. But, seriously Nintendo, for NX you better have a true follow-up to New Leaf.
 
Over in the OT, I linked to my previous post in another thread with some impressions, and some other players left their own impressions in the OT as well.

To summarize what I'm feeling (as a veteran of the AC series and someone who really has no context playing Mario Party games), the game isn't necessarily "bad", which I would judge by being unplayable due to bugs, glitches in general or just piss poor mechanics.

The game is just....it's boring. The Board Game mode you're forced into and I completely skipped over some of the other options to lower the gameplay time so I ended up dumping an hour and 15 minutes into it. Then it sends you back to the plaza but you're forced to play another round...this is before you even get to see that there's more than just the one game!
And then after you're done and spent all this time, the game shows you a bunch of different modes, but guess what, you gotta unlock them! Nothing that I played outside of a few modes were really entertaining enough for me to continue to grind on them to unlock the other modes which should have just been available from the start.

If you wanted to rationalize your purchase, I'd say you're paying about $31 for a handful of minigames that are kind of ok maybe if you're playing with friends. ($13 for Isabelle, $13 for Digby and $3 for the cards). As a single player, I think you'll find other games worth the money elsewhere. If you have friends or people you'll be playing with, it might be worth it.
 

jeffers

Member
Should really just make it free on eshop, then expand out the modes that get use and continually upgrade. Use it to peddle amiibo.
 
The game is just....it's boring.

I think that is the biggest problem.
The board game is pretty much the same layout no matter the season. The month just changes up the background and events a little. Plus it takes at least 30 minutes. Also the events in the game are limited because I think I seen 90% of them in 3 games.

The mini-games are not that great and the first you the game gives you is luck-based. Desert Island tends to be the thing that stands out to me because it is a game with actual strategy and such. I only unlocked half of everything, so maybe something else might be good. However, I feel like it deserves a 2/5 rating so far.

I enjoyed Mario Party 10 way more than this game.
 

Ludist210

Member
I have the game. I bought it with the intention of using it to really introduce gaming to my three year old. And you know what? It worked.

For her, it's fun to tap the amiibo on the GamePad, watch it appear on the screen, and play a game with it (even if my wife and I have to read the dialogue to her after every turn). Since it's more of a luck of the draw game (unlike Mario Party which requires both luck and skill), she can win (and has won).

So yeah, it's not the greatest game in the world. The cost of entry is high for what you're getting. But seeing that smile on my little girl's face made it worth the purchase for me.
 

ngower

Member
The amiibo are great, sure, but the game seems to be living up to the expectations of AC fans.

What kills me about this and HHD is that rather than capitalize on the success of New Leaf, they just cashed in with these half-assed efforts. I can see why trying to make money on the woeful Wii U would be a decent strategy, but HHD's existence makes no sense.

Hopefully all the money they're making off these games will help fund a new, true Animal Crossing title early in the NX's life.
 
The amiibo are great, sure, but the game seems to be living up to the expectations of AC fans.

What kills me about this and HHD is that rather than capitalize on the success of New Leaf, they just cashed in with these half-assed efforts. I can see why trying to make money on the woeful Wii U would be a decent strategy, but HHD's existence makes no sense.

Hopefully all the money they're making off these games will help fund a new, true Animal Crossing title early in the NX's life.

But Happy Home Designer is awesome. It's very refreshing for someone who has been playing New Leaf DAILY since it launched. I hope we see a lot of the features present in it in the next full Animal Crossing.
 

Boogiepop

Member
It ultimately is a shame as this would've been a lot more acceptable as a budget release of, say, $40, so you were largely just paying for the Amiibo stuff and got a little budget game as an extra, ala Wii Play and stuff like that that they've done in the past. I guess at least I got the GCU discount on it so that's something. And I'll still give it a try with friends and see if we can get some fun out of it, as for what it's worth I'm guessing it's getting at least a little more blasted than it should for not being AC/Mario Party. But yeah, I guess I'll see what I think since I already have the thing as I do indeed need those amiibo.
 

Revven

Member
Saw this coming a mile away. How people didn't expect this to happen is beyond me. The board game always looked boring -- there's nothing for the player to actively shoot for as a goal, there's very little strategy (no selling turnips does not add much strategy at all) compared to previous Mario Party entries before 9 & 10, there's no mini-games part of the board game it's all text based (so very little interaction going on between the player and the board game), the player has very little control over getting happy points and bells, and there's very little variety in the board game even when you change the month.

The only possibly fun and interesting thing this game offers is the Desert Island Escape but that isn't enough to justify $60 and I'm sure with how little content it has compared to the board game (since it's not the main mode) it won't last very long or be very replayable in the long-run.

Board games are supposed to be replayable and give the player a reason or incentive to replay them. Mario Party does this very well (ignoring 9 & 10) but this game seems to fail to do so for the reasons I listed above, really.
 
Wow, I thought it would be bad, but worse Meta than Devil's Third and very close to Sonic Boom? That's awful. I get that Nintendo wanted to fill the gaps of Zelda/Star Fox delays, but I think this and Mario Tennis hurt much more than they help with that, as they damage the brands and turn off fans. The game was hinted to be free, and that turned out not to be true, but it should have been true. It should have cost $30 for the bundle, or basically the price of the amiibos and cards.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
qP4nfuV.gif


Pls Mario Tennis be good.

Yeah, about that ....

https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/41534/mario-tennis-ultra-smash-wii-u-review
 

ngower

Member
Saw this coming a mile away. How people didn't expect this to happen is beyond me.

Go back and read reactions at E3. We *did* expect this. I think people just held out hope that Nintendo might surprise us. But given the lack of coverage, review copies, et al the writing's been on the wall for some time.
 

Keasar

Member
I think this is the warning signal what to expect of Nintendo's mobile future.

Only with Amiibos instead of regular microtransactions.
 

Hugstable

Banned
Hopefully Nintendo can realize that these aren't the types of games people wanted. I was so sad when I learned this was a board game during that E3 direct instead of a new Animal Crossing on Wii U.
 

ChaosXVI

Member
Man, the NX launch better be the most show-stopping awesomesauce launch in video game history to make up for this dogshit holiday lineup...

I mean yeah, you got Xenoblade in December, which I'm sure will be great...but they clearly don't expect much from it in terms of sales or else they'd have got it out 3 weeks earlier.

So here's to the triple threat this time next year of 3D Mario, Zelda U/NX, and Retro
id Prime 4
's new game.
 

scamander

Banned
I agree with all of you that this should have been a very cheap pack-in or a free eShop download. What I don't get though, is the overall sentiment in this thread that the quality of many other Nintendo games dropped recently. Yes, Mario Tennis Ultra Smash is waaaaay to sparse, but Happy Home Designer, Chibi-Robo and Tri Force Heroes are fun little spin-offs.
To be completely true, I have so far only played the demo version of the latter, but I had a blast with it. I really don't get the overall negativity towards these games.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Man, the NX launch better be the most show-stopping awesomesauce launch in video game history to make up for this dogshit holiday lineup...

I mean yeah, you got Xenoblade in December, which I'm sure will be great...but they clearly don't expect much from it in terms of sales or else they'd have got it out 3 weeks earlier.

So here's to the triple threat this time next year of 3D Mario, Zelda U/NX, and Retro
id Prime 4
's new game.

It probably will, but then you should ask yourself how will the 3rd and 4th years look. Especially if it's not a resounding success.
 

EthanC

Banned
Is Nintendo going to retire the Seal of Quality now? Between this and that turd of a tennis game, it seems like they've stopped caring about delivering quality.
 

MicH

Member
Man, the NX launch better be the most show-stopping awesomesauce launch in video game history to make up for this dogshit holiday lineup...

I mean yeah, you got Xenoblade in December, which I'm sure will be great...but they clearly don't expect much from it in terms of sales or else they'd have got it out 3 weeks earlier.

So here's to the triple threat this time next year of 3D Mario, Zelda U/NX, and Retro
id Prime 4
's new game.
The Wii had pretty much nothing from 2010 to 2012 and the Wii U launch was still bad and had a huge software drought right after launch. Don't get your hopes up
 
It probably will, but then you should ask yourself how will the 3rd and 4th years look. Especially if it's not a resounding success.

I would say it's more likely that the launch will be as awful as you'd fear. Nintendo left the Wii and DS out to die for years but both the Wii U and 3DS had pretty terrible launch lineups.
 

Anth0ny

Member
holy shit lol

worst holiday lineup ever for nintendo? I don't remember a time where they ever pumped out shit games like this... usually around this time we are getting the best games of the year for them. two years ago we got 3D World and Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the SAME DAY.
 
holy shit lol

worst holiday lineup ever for nintendo? I don't remember a time where they ever pumped out shit games like this... usually around this time we are getting the best games of the year for them. two years ago we got 3D World and Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the SAME DAY.

This is going to be a brutal holiday for Nintendo.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I would say it's more likely that the launch will be as awful as you'd fear. Nintendo left the Wii and DS out to die for years but both the Wii U and 3DS had pretty terrible launch lineups.

I don't know, I assume they don't want to kill NX at launch already. No main Nintendo teams works on Wii U or 3ds games currently, so they must work on something.
 

Scoops

Banned
Jeez, Nintendo of all companies can't afford quality blunders like this and Mario Tennis. Might as well just not even put these games out.

Devil's Third too, but I feel that one was more "our fault" and it doesn't have one of their big name franchises attached to it.

I'm pretty confident Xeno will save the holiday though.
 
This is really embarrassing for Animal Crossing. The fact that the Isabelle and Digby amiibo are only sold with the game in NA is awful too. I'm just going to buy the Isabelle one online somewhere, I won't put money into this.
 

TVGamer

Neo Member
Was really hoping they'd surprise us last second like when 3D World looked super generic to everyone at E3, but alas. Guess I'm importing Isabelle and Digby.
 

Davey Cakes

Member
Is Nintendo going to retire the Seal of Quality now? Between this and that turd of a tennis game, it seems like they've stopped caring about delivering quality.
Thankfully they still put out more quality titles than non-quality titles and the non-quality ones are at least predictably so, rather than being disappointments.

It's pretty obvious when Nintendo actually cares about a game and when they believe that something is merely good enough to make some money and be done.

I don't like the practice, but I'm willing to understand that it boils down to an act of desperation. Nintendo are just padding their lineup, like everyone has already said.

Personally, I think allocating resources to smaller, budget niche titles would be better. That, and putting money into re-marketing the Wii U and 3DS backlog.
 

jax

Banned
So dumb. It's a solid board game, with fun mini games. Ridiculous scores. People buying this game expecting the second coming of KK Slider are smoking meth. It's a $25 Animal Crossing board game. Why is anyone expecting more than this? Because it's not a full AC game? That's just stupid.
 

enigmatic_alex44

Whenever a game uses "middleware," I expect mediocrity. Just see how poor TLOU looks.
OH SNAAAAAAP

This is reviewing even WORSE than Sonic Boom and Devil's Turd! The Metacritic could end up in the high 20s
M4oe5vt.gif


OMG. The damage this game will do to the Animal Crossing brand smh. Between this, the new Mario Tennis being trash and the upcoming flop Star Fox, Nintendo should be ASHAMED of themselves. The Wii U was a great system and deserved a MUCH better send off.
 

TheJoRu

Member
Is Nintendo going to retire the Seal of Quality now? Between this and that turd of a tennis game, it seems like they've stopped caring about delivering quality.

The Seal of Quality isn't about whether they think the game is "good" or not. It's about ensuring the game has adequate technical qualities (basically, it's playable and has gone through some QA), and isn't some pirated software that hasn't gone through any of Nintendo's processes. In America it isn't even called "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality", it's just "Official Nintendo Seal" (so yes, in a way it has already been retired).

It's barely relevant today, it probably more so was back in the day.

EDIT: I wrote this on the last page, didn't I? ...Yes, I did.
 

jax

Banned
OH SNAAAAAAP

This is reviewing even WORSE than Sonic Boom and Devil's Turd! The Metacritic could end up in the high 20s
M4oe5vt.gif


OMG. The damage this game will do to the Animal Crossing brand smh. Between this, the new Mario Tennis being trash and the upcoming flop Star Fox, Nintendo should be ASHAMED of themselves. The Wii U was a great system and deserved a MUCH better send off.

What makes you think Star Fox Zero will be a flop?
 

sonto340

Member
I don't know, I assume they don't want to kill NX at launch already. No main Nintendo teams works on Wii U or 3ds games currently, so they must work on something.
Don't go forgetting Wii's abysmal 2011. We got Kirby, Xenoblade and Zelda and that's basically it. If the NX is due out in 2017(I'm firmly in the camp that there's no way it's ready by 2016) then next year's Wii U line up is looking roughly similar in scale.
The question is if the NX console will face the same horrible drought the Wii U did at launch.
 

jax

Banned
Obviously they've shifted development to NX. Are people really surprised the Wii U is getting less than stellar titles in its last year? Especially after the huge releases of 2014, and big plans for 2016... It's Nintendo people. Do you want an amazing Animal Crossing board game on a dying console or an amazing NX launch lineup? I swear people want to have their cake and eat it too.. Come on.
 

georly

Member
"Desperate Nintendo is the BEST Nintendo"

We don't fully know what they have going on behind the scenes. Very possible these games were compromised and rushed to make next year better, but only time will tell.

Hell, even TPHD is being outsourced to someone they haven't really worked with in the past. The only hope/prayer is everything on wii u is getting thrown under the bus to make room for NX, but even that's not a guarantee - it just offers ONE explanation for the lack of quality titles this holiday and next spring (that aren't just localizations of games that came out forever ago in japan)
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Obviously they've shifted development to NX. Are people really surprised the Wii U is getting less than stellar titles in its last year? Especially after the huge releases of 2014, and big plans for 2016... It's Nintendo people. Do you want an amazing Animal Crossing board game on a dying console or an amazing NX launch lineup? I swear people want to have their cake and eat it too.. Come on.

Looking forward to that amazing NX launch line-up. Also post launch and 3rd and 4th year.
 
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