Nintendo’s Animal Forest returns as an enhanced GameCube title. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Note: This is the import review of Animal Forest +, and not the US version called Animal Crossing.
Animal Forest Plus is a remake of the Japan-only N64 title Animal Forest. It is dubbed a communication game, and centers around daily life in a village populated by animals and your relationships with them. The ‘Plus’ refers to additions such as GBA connectivity, new items and characters, and added Famicom games. Although providing a unique experience with vast opportunity for varied and long term playability, Animal Forest Plus fails in important aspects and may only appeal to certain players.
The game begins as you choose your character’s gender and arrive in the village, named by you. Having no place to live and very limited funds, the local merchant Tanuki offers you your choice of small houses and gives you a job to help you work off the debt. This is basically a transparent tutorial for the basic workings of the game, as Tanuki’s tasks are representative of the future interaction you will have in the village. You must deliver packages, plant flowers, write letters, advertise on the bulletin board, and so on. When you finish your initial tasks, you are free to commence daily life in the village and continue to pay off your debt and expand your house.
Animal Forest Plus is incredibly non-linear. After you complete your jobs for Tanuki, you are free to do anything you want (within your capabilities). You may talk with the villagers and run errands for them such as fetching and delivering items or playing bartering games, or gather fruit or fossils to donate to the museum or sell to pay off your debt. Communication is very important. Although not compulsory, writing letters to the villagers improves relations with them, furthering available errands and prompting them to send you presents. Over time, new animals will move into the village, expanding chances for interaction. Additionally, you can shun your friends and concentrate on catching fish, collecting insects and fossils for the museum, pulling weeds, etc. But constant interaction with the villagers is necessary to ‘advance’ in the game.
The game runs in real time, featuring daily and seasonal changes and special events on holidays. Some villagers sleep earlier than others, and Tanuki’s shop keeps standard business hours.
Animal Forest Plus also features GBA connectivity, allowing you to travel to a hidden island where you can gather new items and meet an additional animal. Also, you can use the GBA to view the island and interact (limitedly) with its inhabitant when your character is away in the village proper.
The goal of Animal Forest Plus is that there is none. One could conceivably play out life in the village for years, following the ins and outs of daily life. However, this is a double edged sword. Although the opportunities for free gameplay and long term play abound, the ‘daily life’ bit can be a major disadvantage. On some days, there simply isn’t much to do, and after exhausting the available errands you have little to do except wait for letters to be delivered (often after an hour or the following day) to prompt new chances for interaction. Unless you’re content to catch fish (which are limited in variety by season and can be collected fairly quickly) or rearrange your furniture, you will sometimes be hard pressed to play for more than 30 minutes to an hour sometimes.
However, you can earn many different Famicom (the Japanese NES) games to put in your house, which you can then play at leisure. They are perfectly emulated and the enjoyment of sitting down a Punch-Out or Ice Climbers session provided me with several hours of old-school goodness.
Some people, especially casual gamers, will enjoy picking up Animal Forest Plus a little everyday and enjoy sending and receiving letters, collecting new and interesting furniture and items for their house, and keeping up with the daily events that unfold in the village during the days, whether you’re present or not. However, I am the kind that only plays games about three days out of the week, and when I do I like to sit down to it for quite a stretch. Thus, I had a really difficult time enjoying this game, even though I admire the premise and can see its appeal.
I work standard days, standard hours, and when I come home after work at 6:00 and want to enjoy a couple hours of playtime, Animal Forest Plus is quite the opposite of what I need. Many of the interesting occurrences have passed me by during my time in the real world, and some of the villagers go to bed quite early (frustratingly usually the ones I need to deliver something to in order to receive a cool new item or further the bartering routines). Tanuki’s shop is usually closed on Sundays, which is my main gaming day. When I can’t sell stuff, I can’t get funds to buy new stuff, and thus can hardly enjoy the experience of customizing my house or buying that cool new axe. Granted, one can adjust the GC internal clock before playing, allowing you to ‘live’ in the village as you wanted, but I feel that is both counterintuitive and a pain in the ass.
On a side note, my fiancé works rotating swing shifts and can only find about an hour at a time to play games, and thus she loves to be able to poke around a bit, write a couple letters and trade a few items in her free time. I appreciate the concept of Animal Forest Plus, and can see its high potential for gamers like her, but for me it was mostly a constant, frustrating tease that I personally found limited and unrewarding.