Welcoming Amiibo to Animal Crossing New Leaf (Review)

So I may not look like the kind of guy who would be into Animal Crossing but hey don't judge a book by it's cover.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Nintendo 3ds released back in November of 2012 for Japan and June 2013 for the rest of the world, introducing tons of new concepts to the Animal Crossing series. Ever since then players have created awesome towns, caught tons of bugs and fished to their heart's content. Lots of people have been playing this game for a long time now but come last week Nintendo has given Animal Crossing New Leaf a fresh coat of paint with the Animal Crossing New Leaf: Welcome Amiibo Update!

This update brings some brand new features such as Amiibo Support for the previously released Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards and Animal Crossing Amiibo figures. What surprised me was the support for Legend of Zelda and Splatoon Amiibos such as the brand new Wolf Link Amiibo and Squid Sister Amiibo figures. These figures, as well as the normal Animal Crossing Amiibo Figures (Not the cards) will send different new characters to your RV Campground, which is a brand new open area that appears on either side of your village, allowing you to buy furniture from them and even adopt them into your village.

In order to buy furniture from the campground though you will need a new form of currency called Mutual Exchange Of Wealth Coupons... This by the way means MEOW Coupons... Yeah Nintendo is at it again with the cats.

These coupons are obtained by completing town initiatives, a list of different activities (You can view the list of your initiatives by viewing your TPC by clicking the little silhouette icon on the touch screen.) such as catching a certain amount of fish and so on. After completing some initiatives you go to the CAT Machine, which is in front of the town hall, and redeem your coupons.

By the way on the subject of Amiibos usable you can actually use the Super Smash Brothers Ganondorf Amiibo. Yes, that's right; you can adopt Ganon from The Legend of Zelda series to be in your village... GANON. You won't be able to adopt people like Tom Nook into your series but who could resist having Epona (Using the Sheik Amiibo) in your village? Seriously. Soon to be released Amiibo RV Cards (Series 5 in other words.) will be available and allow you to bring even more villagers with cool furniture into your campground.

Now the Series 1-4 Amiibo Cards work a bit differently, after updating and playing the game for a bit you'll randomly see a text box open up with someone calling your name, spooky right? Well search the surrounding areas until you find a magic lamp.

Inside this magic lamp is a character called Wisp and after placing him inside your house you can use Wisp to turn your Animal Crossing Amiibo cards (Using the Touchscreen on New 3DS and the Amiibo Adapter on the old 3DS) into villagers you can invite into your town, or ask for gifts from, though Wisp will only accept one request per day so keep that in mind. When wanting to move a villager from your cards in you'll be asked if you want to move one of your villagers out (Only if you have no room for anymore of course) don't worry if he asks for the wrong villager to move just turn him down and he'll suggest someone else. I really have no idea why they couldn't of just given a list of your villagers to choose from but ohh well. You actually get quite a few MEOW coupons for using Wisp as well.

One last cool feature that was added is the Amiibo Camera option that appears on the main menu of the game. Using this you can take photos like normal but using your Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards and Figures you can add any character you want to your photos in all sorts of awesome poses and situations. It may not seem like much but features like this add so much more flavor to the game.

While it does suck that all of that is locked behind Amiibos this update introduces so much more that doesn't even require Amiibos in the slightest. For one the RV Campground doesn't need Amiibos to have RVs there, every day a new RV will turn up offering some cool items. Harv, the Campground Manager, will also have some cool knick knacks to offer you as well. Most of the items cost around 3 to 5 coupons so it's not hard to get a lot of what you want.

The biggest new addition to this game other then the Amiibos in my opinion is the ability to have a completely brand new separate storage area in your house; it's not a new room but a button you tap on your touchscreen while you're in your house. This opens up a brand new separate storage with a massive amount of storage. Actually this has more storage in it then the normal locker storage that came with the base game and as this doesn't replace your old storage I don't think you'll be running out of space for a long time to come. To obtain this secret storeroom you have to pay off your remaining loan, Tom Nook at Nook Homes will then have the option "Something New" when you ask him to expand your house.

After unlocking the extra storeroom a new character will turn up in Tom Nook's place. You may recognize her as Lottie from Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer. Crazy thing about that is she actually gives you the ability to decorate your house just like you can on HHD, which means no more squeezing your character around trying to place items in your house you can just place whatever you want wherever you want. You don't even need a copy of Happy Home Designer to do this but if you do have a copy you can link the game to your Animal Crossing New Leaf to unlock 20 extra furniture items. Forgive me if I'm nitpicking but I really wish it was possible to place items outside your house too, really who wants a bird bath INSIDE their house?

There's something important I need to point out though, when you update you will have to update your Dream Town again, all your old dream town stuff is no longer compatible so it's been erased.

The last feature I want to point out are the new Minigames added. Remember those fortune cookies that cost you 2 Nintendo 3DS Play Coins? Yeah there are some new items you can receive from them, including two Wii Us and a 3DS.

When placed in your house they unlock special minigames for you to play, though be prepared to spend a LOT of Nintendo 3DS play coins on these minigames. The Minigames themself such as Desert Island Escape are fun and all but boy do they cost a lot of play coins so better get walking around with your 3DS if you want to play these minigames.

Also when you boot up the Wii U you actually get the Wii U bootup screen and sound, that's a really cool touch if you ask me. Introducing the Wii U portable! Oh wait... That's called the Nintendo Switch isn't it?

Oh yeah! Apparently they've added 50 new villagers from previous games that weren't in this installment, so that's pretty cool.

All in all this update really brings a fresh coat of paint to the games and while there are still some features I would like in the game that were included in Happy Home Designer I believe what was included really refreshes the game, even if you don't have Amiibos. I don't really want to give ratings to my reviews unlike most reviewers (This isn't really a super professional review anyway I guess... I mean this is a blog.) but I think this update is pretty good and if you don't have the game already it's dropped in price to $19.99 so you're practically buying a new game for a lower price.

Ah who am I kidding about the rating! You can sit on rocks now! Rocks! All those random rocks in your town and you can't break them? Well sit on them! Ten out of ten!

Hahaha okay I'm done now...

See you on the next blog!

PS: Friday will actually mark the 30th blog post on this website! I have no idea how to celebrate this or what I should do so yeah... I'll figure it out by then.

ALSO POKEMON SUN AND MOON COME OUT THIS FRIDAY (Everywhere but Europe... Sorry Europe.)

PREPARE YOURSELVES...

You can check out more about this update on Nintendo's Animal Crossing Website.