Pocket Camp highlights a major problem with New Horizons' insufferable villagers

Now this Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a paid and offline mobile application (known as Complete pocket camping), is practically a complete main game in the long-running cozy series. Since its launch in 2017, Pocket Camp has been steadily receiving love from its developers, with updates adding adorable new items like exclusive outfits and furniture sets. Parallel to this special attention are the villagers, who are the real reason Pocket Camp it's so fun and why it should be used as an example of where the Animal crossing the series needs to be next.

The villagers in Pocket Camp are superior in every aspect to their counterparts in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This occurs mainly because the Pocket Camp villagers have more complete and realistic personalities than New Horizons. In addition to this huge difference, players are able to interact with their villagers in much more unique ways than in the Switch game, which mainly limits players to having repeated conversations every day and exchanging gifts.

Pocket Camp villager interactions are less tedious

More variety and personality

The biggest problem with residents of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is its repetitiveness. Talking to any random villager will likely result in the same dozen conversationsespecially if they have the same or similar personality types. Not only are the conversations a little more varied in Pocket CampBut there are many more ways to play with villagers on a daily basis. Pocket Camp Players can speak to villagers, give advice on clothing or gift options, dress up their villagers, fulfill requests, and find lost items. Although some of these interactions, such as finding lost items, are available in New Horizonsthey are less detailed, can take a long time, and can be more repetitive than in PCC.

There is simply more to do with Pocket Camp other than just having the same interactions and giving gifts until they hand you a framed photo like in New Horizons. The villagers in Pocket Camp have more life in them, since players need to make friends by talking to them daily and helping them at camp. While the animals in PCC They're all cool, it's worth pointing out a flaw in the New Horizons as a main AC game: it is the first main entry where every villager in this game is cool from the first introduction. There's none of the sass or rudeness of the previous games, which makes the experience less meaningful as no friendships develop over time.

You can do a lot more with Pocket Camp residents

Villagers have more depth and more things to do

Not only are interactions better in Animal Crossing: Pocket Campbut there is much more to do with them than just talk and give gifts every day. For example, Pocket Camp has a feature called Memories, which requires some special requirements, such as villager friendship levels and specific furniture, and shows a small scene. These scenes are often cute interactions between the villagers, like The Library Super Sleuth, which shows Raymond helping Beau and Sylvanas find the book they wanted to read. Those fragments of memory bring a lot of personality to residents and give players that many more reasons to try their hardest to befriend them.

Along with deeper friendships, the villagers in Pocket Camp have more things to do at camp, which is partly due to the large number of interactive items that the mobile game has received over time compared to the limited sets of furniture in New Horizons. In New Horizonsthe most villagers can do to interact with their home island is sit on the floor, sit in a chair, pretend to water flowers, or chase bugs, despite the number of items that look like they should be interactive.

In Pocket Camp, Villagers can interact with a wide variety of items. They can turn off lights, taps, and stoves for small interactions that make the camp feel more lived-in. Additionally, they can sleep in beds and occasionally have nightmares, which the player can wake them from. Adorable items from other Nintendo titles, like question blocks and Koopa shells from Super Mario, are interactive as villagers will jump onto the block and make noise on the shells. Exactly the same themed items are in New Horizonsbut without any interactivity.

What the next Animal Crossing can learn from Pocket Camp

Villagers will need a major upgrade

As a series, the focus for most players is interactions with villagers. Animal Crossing: New Horizons dropped the ball on this aspect, as its villagers are mostly categorized as cardboard cutouts with six different personality types. Talking to any villager in New Horizons will give the same result as talking to someone else. Even receiving DIY recipes, a daily ritual, will result in the same four or five tired sentences about insects whispering or being trendsetters. This lack of personality and repetitiveness is annoying, especially for a game that players want to play for months or even years.

What's next Animal crossing the game needs to do is put a much greater focus on the villagers' personalities and the unique ways in which players can build relationships with them which they reflect in their dialogue. The town, island, or city that villagers inhabit needs to feel more lived-in, which can be achieved by letting them interact with more player-placed items. The most important function of the returning villager is to gain friendship, rather than having each villager be the player's best friend immediately, as in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.