Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp launches today

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Despite claiming that the Animal Crossing mobile game would release on November 22, it seems Nintendo has allowed the game to release slightly ahead of schedule. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is now downloadable on both the Google Play and App Store, in North America, UK, Japan, and Australia. Servers appear to be fluctuating between working and resulting in error messages. The game is always-online, so you must have a constant connection to play it.

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chrisman02

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So I've put quite some time into it. LOADED with microtransactions, even has an ad pop up to buy stuff if you stand still too long.

EVERYTHING is timer based, even buying furniture. Unless you pay of course. I hate mobile games like this.

Yes you have to wait for things in the real games, but at least there you didn't need to spend real money if you wanted to skip a timer. Just change the time on the console.
 

Garblant

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So I've put quite some time into it. LOADED with microtransactions, even has an ad pop up to buy stuff if you stand still too long.

EVERYTHING is timer based, even buying furniture. Unless you pay of course. I hate mobile games like this.

Yes you have to wait for things in the real games, but at least there you didn't need to spend real money if you wanted to skip a timer. Just change the time on the console.
I've never seen a single ad popup while I've played this over the month. I also haven't put any money into the game due to the fact that it got linked to the wrong google account when I installed the AU version.

However, a lot of elements in the game do suggest using leaf tickets in some way, shape, or form, but that's just how free to play games are.

Try playing pokemon shuffle (mobile) or Pokemon duel. It's pretty much the same, if not worse when it comes to suggesting that you use the "premium" currency, or spend money to get it if you run out.

One of the good things about this game is that it's not made to be played for hours at a time. They deliberately made it so that way, thanks to all of the timers, shop & village rotations. While timers are used to "suggest" you to use leaf tickets, It's also used to attempt to stop people that try to play the game for long stretches of time (without saying it outright).

Lastly, even the premium currency that they talk all the time about in game can be earned if you simply raise your player's level or complete stretch goals. That's how I got K.K. Slider's Chair 3 days after the game was soft-launched.

(I'm expecting some sort of angry emotion filled reply in return, but I just wanted to calmy write some reasons why I think they did the things that they did)
 
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YamiZee

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So far I like it. I haven't felt the need to use tickets just yet except for some customization things but that's to be expected. The timers have yet to bother me unless I want to buy multiple things. I don't really mind the waiting since you can do whatever you want in the mean time.

Really my only real complaint is that the game feels slow. When you complete a quest the friendship bar slowly fills up, then the game pauses, then your level meter slowly fills up, then the game pauses, then you are informed that you got stuff and you hit ok. And then if you completed a quest you have to tap the quests and hit collect on every item, and each time you do the game loads for a bit, then displays a "you got the thing" screen. Then you hit ok and proceed to waste more times clicking the rest of them. But to this point you havent actually gotten anything. All thats happened is that there is now a red mark suggesting you to click your mailbox. Then you do and have to hit "collect all", then the game pauses and shows a you got it screen, then you hit ok.

I only started today so naturally I keep completing quests but it's just so boring and takes foreveeeer to receive the rewards and everything. I wish they removed the "you collected this, hit ok" screens, and removed the mailbox entirely which is a stupid feature and a complete waste of time.
 
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RedBlueGreen

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However, a lot of elements in the game do suggest using leaf tickets in some way, shape, or form, but that's just how free to play games are.
There are a lot of free to play games that aren't like that, or suggest things in a much smaller capacity. Pocket Camp is severely limiting so it seems like a really blatant cash grab. Want to craft more than one piece of furniture? Use 80(!) Leaf tickets. Already did the few tasks for a certain villager that you can? Use the tickets for that. Don't want to wait two hours for the fruit to respawn? Use fertilizer. It's so in your face about the micro transactions that it's really annoying. A lot of other freemium games use some sort of stamina system if it's an RPG (or a lot of action games) and some micro transaction filled summoning system. Others use an in game currency that you can buy extra of if you run out and don't want to wait. Some games use items that you can get for free but can buy for convenience. But they're usually a lot less limiting than Pocket Camp. There are a lot of good free games now so it's very disappointing that Nintendo's free games are such cash grabs. Fire Emblem Heroes and Pokémon Duel are the only good ones IMO and FE Heroes isn't even that unique. It's still the same stamina and summoning system freemium RPG formula that's been done to death.
 

Pluupy

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After giving it a try, I feel there is something fundamentally problematic about this game. It feels like there is no real purpose to doing any actions.

Usually the charm of Animal Crossing is that you have a nice house and town you can customize. New Leaf did this perfectly and went beyond with introducing new types of interactions such as the island minigames, swimming, campground quests, etc. Pocket Camp is a significantly nerfed Animal Crossing experience.

There is no fish or bug book that records your catches. No bug/fish measurements. No weather. No seasonal/day cycle changes in wildlife. No museum. No fossils. No gardening. No town events. No post office. No slingshot. No collectable music. No letters from mom and dad. Bugs, fish, fruit, and seashells sell for pennies and are not a reliable source of income.

Of course, trimmed gameplay is expected of a mobile game but...it really didn't have to be for Animal Crossing. The series mechanics isn't complicated like Fire Emblem where there are many factors which prevent the developer from delivering a quick experience. Classic Fire Emblem has a lot of unforgiving and difficult mechanics that the simple mobile market isn't used to. Animal Crossing by itself is a very pick up and go experience that could be just like the console release and fit in just fine.

I honestly couldn't recommend this game as a good first Animal Crossing game. It looks like Animal Crossing, it sounds like Animal Crossing, but it isn't Animal Crossing.

Of course, assuming they never expand the game. Intelligent Systems has really improved the Fire Emblem Heroes experience and continues to make significant updates, hopefully Pocket Camp does the same despite not being of the same developer.
 
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RedBlueGreen

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After giving it a try, I feel there is something fundamentally problematic about this game. It feels like there is no real purpose to doing any actions.

Usually the charm of Animal Crossing is that you have a nice house and town you can customize. New Leaf did this perfectly and went beyond with introducing new types of interactions such as the island minigames, swimming, campground quests, etc. Pocket Camp is a significantly nerfed Animal Crossing experience.

There is no fish or bug book that records your catches. No bug/fish measurements. No weather. No seasonal/day cycle changes in wildlife. No museum. No fossils. No gardening. No town events. No post office. No slingshot. No collectable music. No letters from mom and dad. Bugs, fish, fruit, and seashells sell for pennies and are not a reliable source of income.

Of course, trimmed gameplay is expected of a mobile game but...it really didn't have to be for Animal Crossing. The series mechanics isn't complicated like Fire Emblem where there are many factors which prevent the developer from delivering a quick experience. Classic Fire Emblem has a lot of unforgiving and difficult mechanics that the simple mobile market isn't used to. Animal Crossing by itself is a very pick up and go experience that could be just like the console release and fit in just fine.

I honestly couldn't recommend this game as a good first Animal Crossing game. It looks like Animal Crossing, it sounds like Animal Crossing, but it isn't Animal Crossing.

Of course, assuming they never expand the game. Intelligent Systems has really improved the Fire Emblem Heroes experience and continues to make significant updates, hopefully Pocket Camp does the same despite not being of the same developer.
I can't imagine we'll see any significant updates to Pocket Camp. Since the whole point of it is to manage your camp site. The camper is way too small to fill with furniture (I have a modern table, modern dresser, modern sofa, and sleek lamp and the camper is already full). I get that they want us to focus on the camp site but there's no reason we can't have the camper be the size of the smaller houses (I mean it's a game with talking animals so fuck realism) or at least have a customizable tent and give the animals tents to live in while they're on the campsite or the little islands. I mean I already predicted it wouldn't be any good when we got the Nintendo Direct.

You're better off just using a DS emulator on your phone/tablet and playing Wild World. While it's probably the worst main Animal Crossing game it's still much better than Pocket Camp.

We've been able to get some pretty good (but rare) mobile games that are console and handheld quality (some are ports, and some are made for mobile, quite a few are free too, instead of the ridiculous prices Square Enix's stuff is) for years so seeing mobile games that are incredibly watered down or just really casual games is pretty insulting.
 
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player594

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It's almost as if the games are simulation games intended for a young audience and weren't meant to be challenging.
Their really not even simulation. The Sims are a better example. At least you have to keep them alive. AC characters can stand in one place forever and nothing will change with them.

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