New Leaf has pretty much become part of my gaming regimen now and I'm certainly not
thinking of quitting anytime soon. I've perfected and refined my in-game
routine, tackling new tasks and relinquishing others. For instance, I all but
stopped trips to the Tropical Island; although these visits could be quite
productive, they felt too much like farming bouts for my taste. I prefer to
stay in my lovely old village, even though the enrichment rate there is
considerably lower. My early trips to the Tropical Island were not for naught,
though; you could say that they literally bear fruit, since they allowed me to
collect a large range of tropical fruits that I could then replant in my own
village. These foreign specimens acclimatized pretty well, and my local cherry
trees now cohabit with lemon trees, lychee trees and more—not to mention that
my shorelines are now adorned with countless coconut trees.
And talking about local cherry trees, I've decided a couple of days ago that
the peach should hereafter become the local fruit in lieu of the cherry—first
because peach is my favourite fruit of all the ones offered by the game, second
because peaches look so ripe and full, and third because I'm the mayor and this
place is my oyster. I thus started cutting down cherry trees with great
enthusiam and replacing them with peach trees, and I already have a nice and
productive peach orchard next to my home. That's not to say that I will totally
give up on other fruits, mind you: I want peaches to be the prevailing fruit in
my village, but I'm still planning to maintain smaller orchards featuring all
the other fruits—including cherries.
Apart from wreaking havoc on the local flora, I maintain pretty much the same
daily routine as any other New Leaf player: I chat with the neighbours
and fulfil their demands, I hunt bugs, pick up shells and harvest fruits before
selling them, I put some crappy items for sale in the Recycle store and, last
but not least, I savour the littles surprises that pop up each day. (For
instance, yesterday was the so-called "Bunny Day" and involved a
giant hunt for chocolate eggs. That was lovely, although I gave up after a
couple of minutes because the last three sorts of eggs were too tedious to
find.) In a nutshell, I'm enjoying
myself. A lot.
My only real gripe with New Leaf lies in the
fact that it takes so, so very long to accomplish anything in that game. Mind
you, I'm not referring to the overall slow pace of the game, i.e. the fact that
only one public work project can be tackled at a time, the fact that fruits
take a couple of real time-days to regrow or the fact that house improvements
can only be witnessed the next day; this is all part of New Leaf's
unique style and it's what makes the game so relaxing. What I'm referring to is
the fact that even the meanest in-game task takes much longer than it should. I
often find myself playing New Leaf for 45 minutes or one hour at a time;
and yet, when I close my 3ds, I've hardly accomplished anything more than
harvesting some fruits, capturing a couple of insects, excavating a handful of
fossils and repaying a meagre fraction of my loans. The return on investment
when it comes to gaming satisfaction is clearly not meaty enough for my taste:
one hour of gaming should provide me with more tasks to accomplish and a deeper
satisfaction than the one I derive from my daily session of New Leaf. As
a result, I decided to keep things in check and to play no more than 30 minutes
a day; I will accomplish things slower, but that's fine by me. It's not like
the game is rushing me forward anyway, now is it?
Retaliatory measures aside, I identified a couple of factors that play a huge
part in making mundane tasks so unbearably slow. Those are pretty much gameplay
tweaks that seem to have been implemented for the sole purpose of lengthening
play time, which make New Leaf one of these (too) numerous games rife
with fake longevity:
- The default walking speed is way too slow. I'm constantly pressing B to run, which can become hard on my fingers after a while. The running speed should have been the default speed, period.
- The talking speed is also unbearably slow, even when using the B or L button to speed it up, and it cannot be altered in the options. Worse, text cannot be skipped at all, which forces the player to endure the villagers introductory speeches every single time they address them. Not to mention that constantly pressing the L or B button when talking to people can be tiring.
- The inventory's capacity is painfully limited, which forces the player to take a lot of extra trips during the harvesting and selling processes.
- The overall speed of everything is painfully indolent. My character moves around slowly, picks up items from the ground slowly, digs slowly, fishes slowly and so on, as though they have all the time in the world. Well, maybe they do, but I do not.
- Villagers who want to invite you to their places or visit yours always want to do so at least one hour later. Why not just five minutes later, damnit? I have more important things to do than mill about for one hour or reopen my 3ds just to rendezvous with digital animals.
I cannot help but think that New Leaf would be so much more fulfiling if only it played three times faster. Why this languor, anyway? Did Nintendo think players would be all stressed out if their mayoral self moved faster or if text could be skipped? Or is it a classic case of a conscious design to make play sessions drag on unduly and inflate the overall gameplay time, giving birth to impossibly long playthroughs? Whatever the reason, this display of fake longevity spoils my experience ever-so-slightly and could well be one of my main reasons to give up on the game in a distant future. But we're not there yet; for now, I'm still enjoying the game and I want to indulge in it for a little while longer. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
What a fun
read, glad you are enjoying yourself.
Did you know that when you partake in one of the former mayors' games on the
island, you can fill your pockets with other kinds of tropical fruit? Just be
sure to enter the game with empty pockets!
Yes, I did know! :) That's how I managed to collect all the varieties of tropical fruits. To be honest, I was often more engrossed in harvesting fruits than in clearing whatever task the tours required me to fulfil... :P
i never could be bothered with the mini games either, just to get fruit and free flowers. Tortimer is so unfair!
I'm really not fond of them either, too much running around for just a couple of medals! :P
Nice read but I
can't help but notice that you're stressing yourself way too much with New
Leaf.
The game isn't about reaching abstract goals as quickly and efficiently as
possible, it's about enjoying the ride and what the game's RNG decides to offer
you.
By the way, I'll give you a couple of tips I noticed while playing (although
you probably already figured them out by now):
>You can stack fruits! Drag one over the other on the item menu to stack
them and save space. This way you can have 9 in one single item slot.
>Go to the tropical island at night and catch those beetles. They're worth a
fortune! In a single visit you get 200,000 or more bells!
>You can skip Kapp'n's songs by repeatedly clicking on the touchscreen.
Stressing
myself way to much? Mmh... Maybe that's true! :P Although if I don't have a
bunch of goals to reach, I will probably drop the game entirely or play it only
once a week. My "perfect orchards project" is my main motivation to
play the game right now, to be honest! ^^
Thanks for the tips! ^^ Here's another as a reward: when you're in the Recycle
Shop with another villager, you can push them around until they have a crush on
one of your items for sale in the flea-market area and decide to purchase it.
If you sell enough items, Reese's husband will finally wake up and offer some
home decoration service!
To me, the MAIN issue about the game is the inventory capacity. I didn't even wanted to believe that "this is all there is" ! I used to go every day to the store to purchase a BIGGER bag.... When I realized there was no possibility to extend the inventory, my interest in the game decreased suddenly... I'm probably the kind of girl who's stressing herself, as Sieg mentionned :D
Animal Crossing feels half-baked in many ways, and the inventory management is one of them. It's so shockingly primitive that you would think you're dealing with an early-era Gameboy game... Not to mention that juggling between items and rearranging them constantly can become tiring and irritating very quickly. I'll make a confession: playing Animal Crossing made me feel old. The task involved were so tedious and boringly mundane that one hour of play was enough to make me feel exhausted of life... :P
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