10 changes I want to see in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

At the time of writing this, I've put over 150 hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. During that time, I've made several upgrades to my house, placed several bridges and stairs around my island, and have interacted with each menu in the game several hundred times. While I do find this to be a super relaxing game overall, there are a few changes that I really hope get made to it. I'm just not sure if I need to inform Isabelle, Tom Nook, or Nintendo. . . Either way, here are all of the improvements I want to see in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

10 improvements I want to see in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Here are the changes I think would make Animal Crossing: New Horizon an even better game.

It can get a little tedious when you run over to your DIY Workbench and start crafting since you can only craft one item at a time. This can get pretty frustrating when you need to make 10 pieces of fish bait or want to craft multiple items for your home. What makes it worse is that you have to sit through an animation each time you craft something. Sure you can speed it up by pressing A, but I wish it didn't take this long. I end up spamming the A button and looking away from the screen for several minutes just to keep myself sane.

Some people have even come up with some crazy contraptions that help them spam the A button via mechanical means. It would just be so much easier if you could select the number of the same item you want to craft or could craft different items at the same time as long as you have the materials necessary to do so.

Due to the fixed camera, there is a bunch of unused space on your island. I know this was done to make the game reminiscent of previous Animal Crossing games with the top-down view. But, please Nintendo, I'd really like to be able to use all of that space on the North side of cliffs that currently doesn't have anything occupying it. Plus, if I could move the camera, I'd be able to see anything that's placed behind buildings or that has fallen behind trees a whole lot more easily.

You'll also notice this when you use Nook Miles Tickets to visit islands. There are sections of the island that don't have any resources on them because of the camera view. The sections behind cliffs are most noticeably devoid of weeds, trees, and bugs. Being able to rotate the camera would suddenly make this space more usable.

For some reason, you can only purchase one type of each clothing item while in the Able Sister's changing room. So if you see two awesome shirts that you want to purchase, you'll need to buy one of them, exit the changing room, and then re-enter the changing room to purchase the other one. I end up entering the changing room several times each day whenever I visit Able Sisters, which gets pretty tedious. It would be a lot better if I could just make multiple purchases at once.

Whenever I go to the Able Sister's shop or Nook's Cranny I usually second guess myself while buying things. Since the game doesn't tell you what items you already own, it's easy to make duplicate purchases. I really just wish there was a small number next to each item when in a purchase menu that let you know how many of that item you already own in your house or inventory.

I chose an island that has several rivers running through it, which breaks the land up into three sections. Because of this, at the start of my game I was constantly switching to my vaulting pole simply to get around. I really wish that there was a way to map at least one tool to a button so you could pull it out without having to open your inventory or rely on your tool wheel. This would especially come in handy whenever a rare bug showed up, or you happened upon a fish shadow.

While we're on the topic of tools, it would also be nice if there was some kind of indicator that let us know how much life our tools had left before needing to be replaced.

You can stack shells, fruit, wood, medicine, and fishing bait, but for some reason you cannot stack manila clams. Given that manila clams don't sell for much and that their main purpose is to be crafted into bait, it would be much better if we could hold at least 10 of them in one slot at a time. It would make sense given that you can hold 10 pieces of fishing bait in one slot.

This is intended to be a very simplistic game and I get that. But when I'm picking weeds or grabbing apples off the ground, I really wish I could select multiple things at once. Doing it one at a time takes forever and can become tedious when I'm in a hurry.

I don't know how many times I've accidentally terraformed a piece of ground when I thought I was going to terraform the section adjacent to it. Editing cliffs and rivers would be so much easier if a small square highlighted the ground in front of you and let you know where you were pointing.

The idea behind the wand is awesome enough. You can assign up to five different outfits to it, which lets you switch clothes without having to run to your wardrobe. However, any clothing items that get assigned to the wand get removed from your wardrobe. That means that you need multiple sets of the same clothes if you want to mix up what your wearing. But that gets expensive and I've already mentioned how hard it can be to purchase multiple sets of clothes. If it just didn't remove clothes from the wardrobe when they got assigned to the wand things would be a lot better.

While we're on this subject, I want to be able to assign specific hair, eyes, and looks to my wand outfits. For instance, I created a cosplay for Doctor Who, which requires brown hair. I really just wish that the wand allowed you to assign specific hairstyles, hair colors, mouths, eyes, noses, and skin tones to your clothing choices.

I get that this happens to inform you of who's currently on your island, but that could easily be done by simply having a pop up show up on the side of your screen. It gets really annoying when I have to close down any menus or finish any conversations I'm currently having just so I can let someone on my island. Plus, the whole cutscene for someone coming and going takes forever to play through. I wish that would just go away completely.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

As I've said before, I really love New Horizons as is evidenced by the amount of time I've put into the game. However, it's far from perfect. While the simple mechanics make for a relaxed gaming experience, they can also get tedious really quickly. I hope that Nintendo makes some improvements to menus, mechanics, and camera usage in the following months. It would make New Horizons an even better game to play.