Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival
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 If those amiibos weren't such a selling point, New Horizons would have been on the Wii U!
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Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival is a party video game developed by Nintendo EPD in partnership with NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Wii U in 2015.
Why It's Not a Good Festival
- As the title suggests, this game is focused on amiibos, meaning you have to buy more amiibos in order to play the game. This is just nothing, but a complete waste of money, and you could even not have enough money to buy amiibos, or other stuff you would like to buy if you would actually buy amiibos for this game.
- You would be given 2 amiibo and 3 amiibo cards if you bought the physical version of the game brand new, and one of the minigames requires 6 different amiibo cards, meaning that you have to buy an additional amiibo card pack just to play it.
- What's worse is that if you buy a game only copy or download it off the Wii U eShop for free, you would have to find and buy at least one amiibo figure and 1 pack of amiibo cards (2 packs outside North America, or more if you get duplicates in the second pack) to experience everything the game has to offer.
- There's not enough content in the game to justify the retail price of $60. This proves that the game is overpriced, and it's also the same price as Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash.
- The digital version is free, however, you need to have your own Animal Crossing amiibo figure and cards to use it, which makes the disc release completely pointless, other than the fact that it serves as official preservation of the game given that on March 2023, the Nintendo eShop will close on all platforms except for the Nintendo Switch, and will soon be the only way to legally play it without piracy.
- The reason it's priced this high is because of all the amiibo that comes in the package, and the disc is worth next to nothing to produce anyway.
- The game is nothing but pure luck. You have to be really lucky if you want to beat the game, otherwise, you can lose the game easily, forcing you to restart the game. This can be a waste of time if you would replay the same stage from the beginning after failing the stage you played, much like Mario Party 9.
- The turnips, which are basically the game's stock exchange currency, are also guilty of this. Nathaniel Bandy, while making his TRIGGERED! video on the game, managed to obtain 142250 Bells just by exchanging all 570 of his turnips and landing on a helpful space in a single turn.
- Terrible, annoying and clunky controls. To throw a dice, you can't press any buttons, not even if you would hold it for too long. You have to scan an amiibo to do it. This is similar to Mario Party 10's amiibo Party mode. The player can get annoyed by the controls very easily.
- Poor multiplayer support. There is no online multiplayer, which is unjustifiable since this was released in 2015.
- Whenever it's the player's turn, you have to re-scan the amiibo. There's nothing you can do to make the game tell you to just play the game without re-scanning the amiibo. This is another annoying thing made just to annoy you.
- Although it's a party game, like the Mario Party series which contain boards, this game has no minigames at all. Even in a party game. All you do in this game is just roll the dice, read text, repeat. That's pretty disappointing to those people who loved party video games that contain boards and minigames.
- Really boring dialogue. If there are people talking a few times, the game will just want to bore you and waste your time. Even Mario Party 9's dialogue is not that boring.
- Overall, this game started the first downfall of Nintendo before redeeming themselves and go downhill for a second time, and it hasn't recovered since.
Redeeming Qualities
- It runs very well, just like other Animal Crossing games, meaning the game doesn't have huge chances of crashing. This means you can play the game without any run problems.
- The graphics are awesome, making the game beautiful, just like the rest of the games from the series, especially for Wii U and 2015 standards.
- The soundtrack is incredible and really good to listen. Pretty sure you would just want to listen to it for so long just to prove how incredibly the soundtrack is. And as what would you expect from a Animal Crossing game.
- Desert Island Escape is very fun and easily addictive. So much to the point that it was ported to the Nintendo 3DS as part of the Welcome Amiibo update to Animal Crossing: New Leaf, as a playable minigame accessed through the Wii U item.
- Big Character Roster with 16 playable characters if you have all the amiibos that are supported with the game.
- The game is free on the eShop, just as long as you have an Animal Crossing amiibo figure and 6 amiibo cards (the latter being optional), however, this will be delisted following the 3DS and Wii U eShop closures after March 2023.
Reception
Due to the game's serious flaws, the game was criticized by both critics and fans of Animal Crossing for focusing too much on amiibos and boring gameplay. It was considered the worst game of the Animal Crossing series, and also one of the worst Wii U games ever made.
Upon release, the game received mixed to negative reviews from critics, with a Metacritic score of 46/100, and a user score of 4.1. Nintendo World Report gave it a 4.5 out of 10, saying that it had a "boring, repetitive gameplay" and that it took "an hour to get anything good." Nintendo Life gave a 5/10, saying: "Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival does not seem to have learned from them, and brings questionable to downright annoying integration. Were all of amiibo Festival as clever and engrossing as the Desert Island Escape minigame then this package would be the real deal. However, that simply isn't the case. The central board game is slow and plodding, and is tough to recommend to anyone that isn't already a die-hard Animal Crossing fan willing to put up with it. That leaves the minigames, of which seven out of eight aren't compelling enough to continue playing for more than a week."
The game was a commercial failure: only approximately 20,000 copies were sold within its first week of release in Japan. Not helping with the fact that the digital version is free, and the amiibo can be bought separately.
Trivia
It is one of only two Animal Crossing games (alongside Animal Crossing Plaza) released for Wii U.
Videos
Comments
- 2010s games
- Wii U games
- Nintendo
- Bad games from good franchises
- Overpriced
- Party games
- Commercial failures
- Games made in Japan
- Scott The Woz episodes
- Games reviewed by Nathaniel Bandy
- Boring games
- Games reviewed by Famitsu
- Games reviewed by Peanut Butter Gamer
- Games played by PBGGameplay
- Games for everyone
- Nintendo's downfall
- Animal Crossing games