Topic: Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival (Wii U) Review

[ejamer]

So a recent sale convinced me to buy this game - it was half price, and I'm a sucker for the Animal Crossing Amiibo figures.  A few early thoughts?


Meh.  Glad I didn't pay more than half price, and feel like the package was just barely justifiable even then. 


The board game portion of Amiibo Festival just isn't good. It looks pretty and is a "relaxing" experience, and there is some potential with different events and the ability to use cards to affect your movement, but there aren't enough active decisions to keep players involved or engaged in what happens.


On the up side, there is some customization available. If you own Amiibo cards, you can get those villagers to move into the town that makes up your board. This makes you identify more with the game, especially if you've play Happy Home on 3DS to customize the houses that will appear, but winning/losing remains almost entirely a function of random chance.  Also worth noting that each Animal Crossing Amiibo figure available as an avatar will offer a slightly different "story" based on their in-game personalities - so the events and actions you see will vary depending on which character you play as.


I've just started to unload the additional content and mini-games... but expectations are low based on all the negative feedback that I've read online.




One comment in particular that I wanted to bring up relates to how family-friendly (or not) this game is. My hope was that Amiibo Festival would be a good way to have my kids introduced to the Animal Crossing world. They have seen and "played" the actual game on Wii, but it's just complicated enough that they need constant assistance - especially with all the reading. Amiibo Festival is easy enough to play, but also misses the mark by requiring constant reading that is beyond what my kids can handle right now. This is a huge disappointment to me; if the game was voiced, it would be a delightful experience for them to play with or without active supervision.