Written by TheChoujinVirus
Note: The following may contain spoilers to the game (including new features)
Happy Thursday everyone, it’s ya boy Choujin here. Not too long ago, I overheard some excellent news from the latest Nintendo Direct. Animal Crossing was getting some new long-awaited content (I took a break last year due to rediscovering WoW and my NCCT classes). The newest game is not a game, but DLC for New Horizon, but it behaves as its own game. Released on November 5th of this year, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise and Patch 2.0 of New Horizon brings some new life into the game in less than a year.
Gameplay+Story
To see my review of the original Animal Crossing New Horizon, please click here to get my review. We’ll be focusing on Happy Home Paradise and 2.0
First off, Animal Crossing Happy Home Paradise’s story more or less picks up after you’ve got three stars and got K.K. slider to perform for your island. You are greeted by Tom Nook, who calls you to meet him at the airport. There you are greeted and referred to a friend of his. Lottie, a pink otter who made her first debut in a previous game Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. She offers you a job for Paradise Planning, a vacation home resort and remodeling business in a large island archipelago chain. You are tasked with designing the animal villagers that visit the island as their dream vacation homes. Alongside Lottie, you have two new characters and co-workers. Wardel, the manatee who runs the Paradise Planning shop where you get to buy some exclusive furniture for your house back on your island; And Nico, the monkey who guides you and gives you tips on how to design your villager’s home. Over time, as you gather more clients for Paradise Planning, you later help out with building facilities for the island such as Schools, Restaurants, Café, a Hospital, and even an Apparel store.
In Happy Home Paradise, compared to New Horizon, you are tasked with designing all villager’s vacation homes. Some villagers will have a specific theme that fits, such as Jacque and his “Very Exclusive Club” themed home or Ketchup’s Tomato-themed room. You put three items that the client requests (and add furniture, wallpaper, and other stuff) and simply design the best house you can do. You’re not just limited to the interior, but also the exterior of their homes too. You can add furniture to the exterior and things like trees, bushes, flowers, and fencing.
Upon completing a job, you’re paid in Poki (the currency of the island). You can use that to buy furniture exclusively from Happy Home Paradise and bring it over to your island (including new ceiling furniture like lights and murals). The more houses you complete, the more the main resort island improves. Through that, you can unlock facilities and new features such as Partitions to give parts of a room a divider between them, background noises for providing an atmosphere, adding a second story to the vacation home, and even allowing roommates to share a house for themselves.
But Happy Home Design isn’t something new as well. Patch 2.0 brings you a whole new feature to the gameplay since Patch 1.3’s return of Diving. 2.0 Brings a ton of features into the game that breathes new life into the game
The first feature introduced is a new form of DIY: Cooking. You can now cook food that you can use as furniture for your house or eat to give you strength (which yields more than eating a single piece of fruit). It also adds 4 new crops (alongside Pumpkins); Tomatoes, Potatoes, Wheat, Carrots, and Sugarcane. They can be used to create various things like bread, smoothies, fish dishes, and various other edibles that your character can whip up.
Another new feature introduced is the return of the Kappa, Kapp’n, and the mysterious island tours. Unlike the airport tours set in a few islands, Kappn’s tours are random and can bring you to various unique times, days, and even seasons. Meaning your island is in the summer, but you can find a winter island out there. This makes it helpful for finding seasonal fish or bugs (I ran into a summer island and caught a ton of stuff).
The game also adds 12 new K.K. songs for you to enjoy, such as K.K. Break (a song many suspected has been influenced by a specific meme), K.K. Lovers and K.K. Polka.
The Roost makes a return, too, bringing back Brewster and his coffee bar back into your village’s museum. Though this time, it now adds a new feature: An Amiibo phone that lets you invite villagers and special characters to the Roost for a cup of coffee (sometimes they may bring others with them, such as Blathers and Celeste). You can also see returning Animal Crossing characters that haven’t made an appearance in years should you use their amiibos, such as Resestti, Chip, Gracie, and Dr. Shrunk. Also returning is the aerobics stretching segment exclusive to physical exercise days from older Animal Crossing titles. Now a minigame you and the villagers can participate in alongside some old companions. That’s right, we got the Gyroids back. These little noisemakers make a return and with a new feature. Sometimes, on a mysterious tour, you may find fragments of these little guys. If you bury the fragments back at your village and then water them, you’ll be able to grow a gyroid. Not only can you do that but customize them to match some colors and thus make them unique to your own house.
Harv’s island has gotten an update too in this expansion. Originally a place to take photos, it now hosts a co-op of various businesses for you to look around. Some of the random roaming villagers like Redd, Kicks, Saharah, and Leif can be found there from time to time selling their goods (or vacant if they’re visiting your town). However, we have four returning villagers. Tortimer, the former mayor and owner of the island, now serves to help you access your home storage inventory. Reece and Cyrus also return to provide their customization services to you. Not only can they do work for stuff that you can do, but they also can do exclusive work that regular DIY customization lacks, such as customizing fences for your village or Nook Mile furniture for your town. Katrina, the fortune teller, returns to do what she does best: reading your fortunes. Lastly, we have Hariett, the hairdressing poodle who can teach you some new hairstyles that you could benefit from.
Lastly, Animal Crossing adds several new and returning villagers from the game. Some of the newest villagers include the likes of Sasha, Cephalobot, and Shino. While the returning villagers are characters not seen in over 20 years since the first Animal Crossing game. Those characters like Chabwick, Ace, Azalea, and Faith give 2.0’s new villager roster a whopping 16 total. Something not seen since 1.9’s return of the Sanrio Amiibo villagers.
In short, there’s a ton of new content that some new and established players will be seeing while playing the game.
Happy Home Greatness: what they provide
The expansion and update provide a ton of unique features that change the game. One such that is enjoyable is the connectivity between Happy Home Paradise and New Horizons. The last Happy Home game didn’t have much connection save for just being a spin-off game. However, Paradise adds interconnectivity for those who bought the DLC. For starters, any furniture you buy from the island can be used in your village as well, and some of the DIY recipes you’ve created can also be used in decorating your own house. Also, you can bring your villagers to the resort by gifting them souvenir chocolates. This gives some players with no amiibos a place to give their favorite villagers to visit from time to time.
Another feature that makes the expansion good is the convenience of Kappn’s Tours and Harv’s island. Initially, one would have to travel or visit another person’s island to find some fish or bugs at a specific season. Now with the return of Kapp’n and his tours, you can have a chance to fill the fish and thus not worry about the fear of missing out. Also, Harv’s island and the co-op allow you to visit some wandering merchants for a chance at some stuff you missed or mostly in hopes of finding what Redd has for sale to fill the museum.
The last feature one would find interesting is the cooking. This was a feature many animal crossing fans wanted in since forever and hinted in some games. It also allows folks to make use of some fish like Sea Bass, Red Snappers, and pumpkins for other than bells or one-time furniture for a specific Holiday.
Beestings: what the game lacks
Though the game is fun, it has some problems that make it moot and annoying, at worst, when it comes to it.
One such example, of course, is not all features of Happy Home Paradise can be used in New Horizons. What I mean is that though you can create isles and partitions for your home and others, features like background noises, lighting, expanding the room, and adding a second story are exclusive to Happy Home Paradise. This can feel real disappointing for those who unlocked the feature of being able to redecorate your villager’s homes back on your island (and there are talks about a game-breaking bug that can ruin your game if using this feature.)
Another issue is that though we get to see some older villagers return through the patch or amiibos, not all the villagers have returned. I’m talking about the crossover villagers. These villagers were tied to other games when using amiibos from those games such as The Legend of Zelda, Splatoon, and Monster Hunter. Though we did get the return of the Sanrio villagers, it’s disappointing that some like Felyne, Wolf Link, and Inkwell haven’t made a return back to the game. These characters were pretty popular for a ton of reasons and made using non-Animal Crossing amiibos helpful.
Lastly, though the game has some great perks, the major problem is it’s locked behind time. For example, when you’re building shops for the co-op, you can only donate a max of 100k per day, meaning those billionaires who hoarded bells will be prevented from day 1 from getting the plaza done. Kappn’s tours are more or less locked one tour per day. It is understandable as one could go around and farm bells or fill their museum of bugs and fish; however, that’s an annoying feature that makes it feel padded.
Conclusion: should one get the game?
Happy Home Paradise and 2.0 adds some new life into a game and gives folks a taste of what live patches Animal Crossing New Horizon may have in store for the future. For those who took a break from the game, it’s a good incentive to return while those playing for a year will find new features to explore.
Addendum: As of 11/11/2021, confirmed by Youtuber Crossing Channel, a hotfix was released for the designer bug that would brick your game if you designed people’s homes back on your island.
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