Why I Still Can't Stop Revisiting Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is celebrating its 10-year anniversary today, June 9, 2023. Below, we reexamine New Leaf next to the explosive popularity of its successor, New Horizons, and find appeal in the simpler approach.
It's no exaggeration to say that Animal Crossing: New Horizons changed everything for the once-sleepy life simulation series. Thanks in large part to the onset of the pandemic, New Horizons blew past the combined sales of all previous entries just six weeks after release, and it's sold more than 42 million copies so far. But though New Horizons garnered some well-deserved love from critics and fans alike, I've personally put more hours into its 3DS predecessor, New Leaf, which just turned 10 years old, which still stands as the best pure Animal Crossing experience.
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Now Playing: Animal Crossing: New Leaf Announcement
New Leaf is the fourth entry in the Animal Crossing series, and it's fair to say that the game was considered a somewhat conservative evolution of what made the series so good in the first place. Prior to New Horizons, every new entry was essentially more of the same, with a few small twists to keep things interesting. Though that might sound like a criticism, the slow-paced life simulation offered by Animal Crossing doesn't need dramatic shifts to entice fans, especially when they wait a few years between releases.
New Leaf nails the fundamental aspects of Animal Crossing as a series, while adding a number of key enhancements that make it significantly better than its
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