I'm currently playing through 'Let's go to the city', which is my first time playing an Animal Crossing title. From afar the series always seemed to me to be the antithesis of what I look for in video games. Whether or not I enjoy a game is wholly dependent upon the mechanics and systems. The 10 hours or so that I've spent playing 'Let's go to the city' tells me that the series might not be for me.
My primary concern is that the gameplay so far is very shallow. I'm not really into collecting things for the sake of it. I have no problem collecting every star in Super Mario Galaxy, for instance, but that's more a by-product of enjoying the platforming rather than a drive to collect things. In Animal Crossing, it seems to me that collecting and buying 'things' IS the game. Everything you do revolves around collecting 'stuff'. Which to me just isn't all that appealing. I barely care about my real world possessions, never mind my virtual ones.
I'm also the type of person who likes to set myself down in front of a game and really dig into it. I tend to play games in terms of hours rather than minutes at a time. Animal Crossing on the other hand seems designed so that you can only play it in small chunks and at different times of the day. As a result, usually 10 minutes after turning the game on I find myself running out of things to collect or people to talk to. I'm sure alot of the depth of the game comes from playing it on different dates and at different times, but that style of gameplay doesn't really jive with how I enjoy games.
The series quite clearly has it's fans, but I don't think it's for me.