It's cute...almost TOO cute!...
GAMEPLAY: This game really doesn't have a story and really doesn't need one. It's a very cute sim. But here is the way it starts anyway.
Your on a train and a cat comes up to you and starts talking. And right from the start you will be confronted with cuteness on a level you have never seen. They all have cute little voices where you can't really make out what they are saying. It's all very sweet. Anyway, you tell him your name, gender, and you also get to name the town you will be living in.
Once you get into town you meet Tom Nook, the racoon who runs the local shop and is also selling you your house.
You have 4 houses to chose from. It doesn't really matter which one you choose because, as torn up as they are now, you can always change the carpet, wallpaper and roof color and even the size of your house.
After you choose one you realise that you do not have the money to pay for it up front, so you are now in debt to Mr. Nook (as you will be for most of the game).
This brings me to my next topic, making money. Money is hard to come by, and everytime you make your house larger the more you have to pay back to Tom Nook.
Money can be made in various ways. One is to dig up fossils and mail them off to the museum from the post office (the post office is also where you can pay off your debt to Tom). Once you get them back you can either donate them to the museum or sell them. I would sell them until you have your house completley paid off personally. Other ways is collecting fruit, seashells, bugs, fish, and other things you do not want anymore. After paying off your debt to Tom Nook you will get a gold statue of yourself in front of the train station.
Now, onto the town itself. The time in the game, as you most likely already know is the same as the time that is set on you GameCube's clock. Problem is, if you play late at night, Tom Nook's shop will be closed and so will pretty much everything else. So what most people end up doing is changing the time on the GameCube. This is kind of a small flaw to me in some ways just because when you run out of things to do, you want to change the clock back...But maybe everyone doesn't play the game as long as I do.
OTHER THINGS AROUND TOWN: Also in your town is the mayor (who rarely shows himself) and your neighbors. Each has a pretty distenct personality, except some. Some of them act just like another character. This is once again only a small flaw.
The best thing about these neighbors is if you talk to them, sometimes they will give you things. And a lot of times you can help them perform a task, which usually consists of taking one item to another person or fetching another item and taking it back. But you always get a reward.
Speaking of items, there are a couple places to get them. One is the dump, another is the police station (lost and found), and another is the trees. If you shake the trees, every now and then you will find an item. But let me warn you, it's pretty rare and usually what you get is a beehive for shaking the trees.
One of my favorite things about Animal Crossing is decorating your house. There are many different types of furniture sets, paintings, clocks, wallpaper, and flooring. It would actually take about a year of playing this game to collect everything.
Another thing about the town, is come holidays or weekends, there is usually something going on around town. It really creates a little world.
Now I'm not going to talk about every little detail of the game, because there is clearly to much to talk about. But I will say that it's a game that you can easily jump into but still spend hours playing.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND: The graphics are VERY cute, super deformed character type graphics. They really weren't striving for realism when making the graphics. But then again, Animal Crossing wouldn't be Animal Crossing without the ultra cuteness.
As for the sound, the music is cute and pretty pleasing to the hear but it can get old sometimes. My personal favorite part of the sound is the voices. In the game, when someone talks there is a little balloon for captions but they still have voices, you just can't tell what they are saying. It's very cute.
SUMMERY: I really think that anyone can get into this game. Cuteness or not. It's just plain fun. Except for a few drawbacks, really anyone can play this, young or old. So if you own a GameCube, you really owe it to yourself to get this game. Be warned though, it will consume any spare time in your life.
~Amnesiac23/Cassie