Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review: Moe Gives It a 8.3 / 10

Animal Crossing: New Horizons landed in March 2020, when the whole world got sent to its room, and it became the island everybody moved to. That's not nostalgia talking, that's timing nobody could buy. Nintendo shipped a slow little life sim about fishing, debt to a raccoon, and decorating your yard, and it turned into a worldwide group hang.

As a game, it's gentle to a fault. You dig, you plant, you visit friends, you pay Tom Nook forever. The terraforming tools let you rebuild the island your way, and the museum is a genuinely lovely place to donate a fish at midnight.

For a lot of people this wasn't a game in 2020. It was the neighborhood.

Why an 8.3 and not higher? The tools are clunky: crafting one item at a time, menus that fight you, villagers whose dialogue repeats by the second week. Nintendo also stopped feeding it new content sooner than the community deserved.

But I won't pretend those hours didn't count. For a lot of people this wasn't a game in 2020. It was the neighborhood. That earns its place on my list.