If you have many friends playing Animal Crossing who haven’t figured out how to use party chat on their phones, you might find a use for the paid upgrade. For everyone else, the real value lies in the free patch. So, how is the free update working out so far? The biggest addition is a new hotel on the island. While I am skeptical that you can build an eight-bedroom resort with a reception area and souvenir shop on a small wooden pier without it falling into the sea, I am willing to overlook that since I am not a structural engineer.
As the main feature of the 3.0 update, the hotel is acceptable. If you already have the Happy Home Paradise expansion from 2021, you have likely seen and done similar things before. Each day, a few new rooms open up, and you are invited to decorate them with furniture to match a specific theme. Once you finish, you earn hotel currency to buy souvenirs. It is typical for Tom Nook to pay employees with money they can only spend at work. Eventually, a couple of tourists from off the island will visit for a short time. You can also choose the outfits they wear during their stay so everyone can easily spot them.
That is essentially it. By all rights, I should not enjoy it this much, especially since I have done the same thing many times in Happy Home Paradise. However, I still find it relaxing to match wallpaper with chairs. It helps that the game presents everything with its usual charming style, from the catchy background music in the hotel lobby to the three generations of kappa running the place. But really, it is not the hotel that has kept me engaged; it is the smaller changes in the 3.0 update that fix some of New Horizons’ lingering annoyances.
The ability to craft multiple items at once is a welcome addition. This is especially true if, like me, you have sudden design ideas that require a lot of materials. For example, I might decide I need to replace all 50 green fence posts with black ones immediately. Similarly, crafting now pulls materials from storage instead of just your personal inventory, which cuts down on a lot of hassle. Speaking of storage, hoarders will be happy about the increased inventory space. I have not been able to take full advantage of it yet because Tom Nook charges a huge amount for a bigger wardrobe.
Meanwhile, the new communal island-building feature is nice but a bit niche. It lets a group of friends work together to create and decorate a custom dream space. This feature depends on how many Animal Crossing fans you know. Elsewhere, Resetti’s new island clean-up business is handy but expensive. The option to complete crafting requests to earn more hotel points is also available. By far my favorite new feature, ignoring the silly Lego furniture and the Zelda or Splatoon unlocks I cannot access because my amiibo are stored away, is the button that lets you hop an inch off the floor. It is suggested that this helps with landscaping by centering you on the building grid, but I have mostly been using it to vibrate adorably in place.
If you are trying to picture what this update offers, you are probably correct in thinking that New Horizons’ 3.0 release and Switch 2 counterpart are not essential. These updates likely won’t pull you back in for hundreds of hours. Instead, they are nice-to-have additions for the most dedicated players and for new Switch 2 owners. Four years after major development wrapped up, that is expected and fine. However, whether it is fine enough to cost £4.19 is something only you can decide.
What all this has done is give me a nudge to jump back into the game. And you know what? It is lovely to be back. I am ticking off a few missing fish and relaxing for a few minutes each day. I had genuinely forgotten how nice a place Animal Crossing is to visit. Am I annoyed that I cannot reliably swear at Chops from halfway across my island? A little bit, maybe. But there is always the old-fashioned way to do things.
