Secrets of the Strategy Guide: the Good and Bad of Animal Crossing City Folk

By Joe Fourhman | November 18, 2008

I’ve been picking my way through the Animal Crossing City Folk strategy guide to see just how the game is going to surprise - and disappoint - me. Even as a longtime fan of the series, I have to admit that Nintendo has NOT moved the needle very far. It’s not the barely-improved graphics that bother me; it’s the repetition of structure. Why should Tom Nook’s tutorial be identical to the tutorials of both Wild World and the GameCube original? How tough would it have been, Nintendo, to come up with a different series of tasks to introduce players to the controls and possibilities of Animal Crossing? Instead of having to deliver packages to local villagers, how about Nook requests you catch a bug? A change as subtle as that would have acknowledged the legion of fans who played the previous games, while still providing simple starter tasks for the newbies.

Nevertheless, there still are fun features and cool tricks that enhance the experience… albeit sprinkled with plenty of “Oh come on, they didn’t fix THAT!?!” moments. I will try to keep things spoiler-free, but if you’re a lapsed/curious Animal Crossing fan, follow me inside and see if there’s any reason to sway your decision one way or the other. Please keep in mind that this is mostly from the printed strategy guide, a document that sometimes ends up incorrect due to last-minute changes or writing/editing ineptitude.

Left and right on the d-pad cycle through your tools. This is a biggie, as before you had to go into your inventory every time you wanted to switch from digging to fishing. Pressing down on the d-pad automatically puts any tool away. Nintendo did not expand your inventory slots - which sucks - but this slight interface change makes things quite a bit easier and faster.

New Nintendo-themed secret items. As you can see from my screenshot, I already have a couple fanboy conversation pieces that came over with me from Wild World. But the Arwing and Master Sword are old news; Tom Nook has a great assortment of Nintendo items available only as rewards for shopping at his store. Think about some very specific items from various Wario, Metroid and Legend of Zelda games!

City Folk is ready for at least thirty-five years of gameplay. Here’s a spoilery example of Animal Crossing at its nutso best. There are 35 unique shirts, only available from Tortimer at the New Year’s Eve party. And since they cover each year from 2000 to 2035, you’ll have to TIME TRAVEL (which is totally cheating) to get them all!

Every villager has a birthday. If you give a villager an item on his or her birthday, he or she will be more likely to stay in your town. So if you get that awesome grumpy red octopus, be at his door on September 20th with a gift.

There are at least six new special visitors who show up with rare items to collect, and it looks to me like EVERYBODY from the two previous games has returned. Even Wild World no-shows like Jingle and Franklin. That’s a lot of exclusive merch to chase! Although I’m still not cool with Gulliver being turned into an astronaut… his shipwrecked sailor routine was much funnier.

You can send Animal Crossing letters and photos to Wii Friends who do not own City Folk. Smart. Advertising in action! The bad news is that you can only do this once per day.

Shirt design has partially improved. You can now make a Pro design that lets you customize the front, back and both sleeves of your shirt! Unfortunately, you’re still constrained to those 16 bizarre pre-selected color palettes. One step forward, two steps back.

Feng shui is 25% easier. In the original Animal Crossing, you had to track all four feng shui colors when placing furniture in your house - orange on top, red on right, green on bottom and yellow on left, which I always remembered with the helpful abbreviation ORGY. In City Folk, orange is no longer part of the feng shui equation.

Brewster eventually offers up additional storage. Drink his coffee and earn this reward. It sounds like it’s only storage for one particular type of item, but we AC horders will take whatever storage space we can get.

There’s a purpose for donating bells to the Town Hall. In Wild World, you would donate money and eventually receive feathers for your cap. You can still get the feathers in City Folk, but there are three to four actually cool rewards for donating money.

There’s a new level of tools. AC has always had golden tools, which require complicated methods to unlock… but it was worth it for an axe that would never break! City Folk introduces silver tools, which have different benefits. The silver shovel, for example, generates 10% more money when you use it on your daily lucky rock.

You can save anywhere. No more running back home to save-and-quit!

And yes, Mr. Resetti is still around and is even more concerned about you not properly saving your game.

You’re still limited to four emotes. Wild World introduced emotes - where your character can cry, laugh or grumble at the touch of a button - but then limited you to only four of them. City Folk continues this ridiculous limitation. If you learn a new emote beyond #4 (and there’s plenty of them) you have to delete an old one. WHY???

Still no mention of hidden NES games. We all knew this. Wild World had no hidden games either. But it bears repeating. Finding all of the cool old-school games was a Huge Deal for the first Animal Crossing, giving the franchise some buzz. Nintendo should have found a new way to stoke the fanbase.

Anybody remember the Official Nintendo Power Animal Crossing Strategy Guide, which took three pages to explain NES Punch-Out and then Nintendo never released a way for players to unlock that game? (Not to mention Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros…)

The Auction House is limited to your friends. Lame. Rather than seeing an auction of the entire world Animal Crossing community (like, say, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl), you can only bid on items auctioned by your Friends. No Friends, no auctions.

If you use the Mii Mask, you can’t wear any hats or accessories. Stupid! So I have to choose between my beautiful Mii face or this sweet Diver’s Helmet? Boy, how hard would it have been to render a baseball cap on a stinking Mii’s head.

There’s not that many region-exclusive holidays. Some level of hype was made that each region would get its own specific holidays, but it’s maybe three per locale. And that’s mainly because everybody celebrates Mother’s and Father’s Days on different weekends. Japan gets Bean Day on February 3, for example, a day after the US gets Groundhog Day. There are exclusive items associated with those events, so it will pay to make some global Friends. I don’t think the strategy guide is complete on this score, however, as it does not include any Korean holidays and Nintendo has previously listed Korea as one of the markets getting a custom build of the game.

Some villagers have moved out… forever. Hey, where’s Anicotti the mouse or Aziz the lion?!?

You still can’t donate multiple items to Blathers at once. I like Blathers. But why can’t I give him three bugs at the same time instead of having to sit through his spiel over and over again?

Online multiplayer is just as weak as in Wild World. Like, identically weak. Instead of including multiplayer-specific minigames and items, online play is just more trading, fishing, running and chopping down each other’s trees. Only now with voice chat. It looks to me like you can’t even take your online Friends on the bus to the new City Plaza area, but I could be wrong about that.

Typical Nintendo, right? They never seem to do what you want them to do, but they always do something you didn’t expect.