Animal Crossing - Not Your Typical Role-playing Game

Animal crossing, Nintendo's "communication" game, is not your typical role-playing game. The premise is unique. You play a human leaving home to make your way in the countryside village with the same name as the game's title. When you arrive, you have no money and no place to live. You must go to the general store and ask the owner to loan you a house. The goal of the game is simply to repay your debt to the village's shop owner. There is no time limit to repaying the loan, and the game does not direct you to a certain path or course of action like other RPG's. Events happen in real time through the use of Gamecube's internal clock, allowing for daytime and nighttime activities, along with special events like holiday celebrations and seasonal changes.

Animal crossing's label as a communication game is accurate because it is basically what you do. You communicate with your zoo and farm animal neighbors by talking and sending them letters. Of course, the animals do most of the talking leaving you with only three short responses to choose from. However, each animal has a distinct personality and will talk about a wide variety of subjects. Rarely do you have a conversation or receive a reply letter that is repetitive. It is very amusing as they insult their fellow animal neighbors, themselves and even you.

The game isn't all about communication. It is also about collecting certain items to sell and pay off your debt to the villages shop owner. There are many different types of things to collect such as fossils, fish, insects, art, fruit, furniture, wallpaper, carpets, stationary, cloth patterns, and gyroids, which are little twitching robots that resemble cacti. The amount you can collect of each type is quite large. There are 40 species of fish, and insects. You can receive just about any type of item as a reward for doing an errand. The most command errand is the typical courier tasks in which you deliver an item or pick up an item and bring it back.

Picking up items from all your neighbors can be very tedious. They will often loan items that have been loaned out to them to a third animal, and sometimes the chain extends to a fourth or fifth. The results are only mildly annoying and not exasperating because the village is small. The tasks to earn collectibles, does not take up much time or requires any skill. Fishing is the only activity with real challenge to it. Its only requirement is a good reaction time. You see the silhouette of the fish in the water, so all you have to do is cast your line in front of the fish and wait until the bobber to sink. You will only have a short amount of time to press the A button to catch your fish.

The game is also makes good use of Game boy Advance link cable. You can use the link cable as a portable version, of the pattern design shop, and it can unlock a remote island where you can find different species of insects and fish you can not find on the mainland. You can also use Game boy Advance to play vintage Nintendo games. There are 20 games you can obtain by using an E-card reader, which is a device that scans special cards that can unlock not only vintage Nintendo games but also additional music, and different pattern designs.

Animal Crossing is not challenging or plot driven with tension. You don't fight bosses or kill everyone to avenge your family it is instead a saccharine sweet, child-friendly game that has a great sense of fun that will make children and the child at heart smile as they play. The game is rated E for everyone.