Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer Bundle for Nintendo 3DS - Design Your Dream Home in the Beloved Game | Perfect for AC Fans & Home Design Enthusiasts

I have been a big fan of the Animal Crossing franchise since Wild World on the DS. I have played hundreds of hours of Wild World and New Leaf (3DS). I enjoyed home design in both games and figured Happy Home Designer (from now on, I'll call it HHD) would be right up my alley. Was it? Well, sort of...PROS:-No real time clock. The days change based on completion of jobs (designing or redesigning houses or civic buildings). If you're a busy adult or student, it can be hard to get in and do things in your village every day. In the main series AC games, there are penalties for not checking in everyday - Weeds grow, you miss items in the stores, beloved villagers move away, etc. In HHD you can play at your own pace, completing several days in a row if you choose.-Tons of decorating options. There are more furniture items than ever before. HHD introduces Ceiling items like streamers and ceiling fans which add greater design possibilities. You can also decorate the exterior of homes for the first time in the series.-No shopping for items. Once a set is unlocked, it's yours to use. No more being missing that one Modern item you need to complete a set.-Nice DLC. So far in the US we've gotten Louie, who brings Nintendo items and Filly, who brings unbranded convenience store items. Soon we'll get Felyne who will bring Monster Hunter themed items.-Avatar Customization. In the past, if you didn't want to play a fair-skinned character, you had to leave your DS on and let your character "tan" over several days. This "tan" would fade within as many days. Now you can make a brown;skinned character from the get-go. I hope that Nintendo will keep this option in the next Animal Crossing game.CONS-Repetitive. This game is nothing but home and building design. If home decorating was not your favorite or second favorite thing to do in the previous AC games, you probably will not like this game. There's no shopping, no growing; nothing besides designing houses for villagers and a handful of civic buildings like schools and hospitals in the town center.-Shallower dialog. Villages have a lot less to say in this game. You can't make friends with them as you have in previous games. If social interaction with villagers is a huge deal to you, this game may not be as interesting to you.-No real time clock. I know I mentioned this as a pro, but it can also be a con. Because the time of day is not tied to a real world clock, the world of this game doesn't feel as immersive. Because time doesn't progress as it does in the real world, there are no seasonal changes. It's always summer in the town center, and the season at each villager's home depends on one that you choose when picking the plot for their home. As in the real world, there's a certain beauty to watching the season change in this game and that is missed in this installment.-Special Character visits locked behind Amiibo Cards. Imagine New Leaf, now imagine wanting to see K.K. Slider., now imagine having to have a hard-to-find, randomly packed card to see him. That's how HHD works. If you want to design for and talk to favorites like K.K., Isabelle, Tom Nook, or Blathers, you need their Amiibo Card. Regular villagers will eventually show up in the town square, but these specials will NEVER appear unless you have their Amiibo Card.-Amiibo Card. In general, these cards aren't needed, but I fear HHD is a test bed for the future of Animal Crossing which will be filled with content locked behind expensive and hard to find blind-packed cards.-Avatar Customization. While you have more options to decide what your character looks like, your dress options are more limited than ever. As an Employee of Nooks Homes, you have to wear the Nook's Homes cherry red blazer all of the time. You can change your glasses, shoes, socks and head gear, but you can never change your shirt.If I had to purchase this game all over again, would I? Right now, I'd lean toward "no". It's clear that there's a lot of the usual Nintendo love put into this game, but it just does't have the potential hundreds of hours of gameplay that the main AC games do, unless you REALLY love interior design.While I have spent many hours playing this game, there are a lot of things that could have been done WAY better. It is not nearly as bad as the newer games that came after the GC but before new leaf, however it is still kind of disappointing.The concept of this game sounded absolutely fun, and it is, for a week or two. For starters, I completed it in a couple weeks; and I only played it a couple times a week because of my busy schedule. The town only had a few facilities and they you are done. You can remodel them, but I wanted to build more things. They should have multiple towns you can work on / move to. maybe with general themes or standards to adhere to. Also, I can understand that this game is probably more geared towards kids and therefore doesn't want anyone's feelings to be hurt, but it is just not challenging enough. You can pretty much do anything you want with their house as long as it has the few couple items they require you to have in it. You should be able to design it creatively, but you shouldn't be able to just leave it empty or make it completely not what they want and still have them 'love it'. Maybe they could have had different settings for whether you want challenges, free design or easy tasks for younger people. And it is also kind of a bummer that you cant customize everything. The first things that immediately come to mind is the self portrait of the villager and the lids on the bug containers. You cant change the color of those and they tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Of course I wish everything was able to be customized as well.And it also kind of didn't make sense to me that you could pick the same exact plot of land for all the villagers if you so pleased to. I figured you would have to choose different lots and have the challenge of making it work with what plots you have (since some of them kind of suck / are more difficult to work with). And I was kind of bummed that you never get to have very many rooms. you can have a large room, or a medium room with a really small room attached. and then you can upgrade to an upstairs room as well (but I still haven't totally figured that out yet). In the other animal crossing games you can upgrade your own house quite a bit, so it kind of didn't make sense to me.Aside from all of that, you don't get to have your own house, go shopping or pretty much change your characters outfits. They should have just had you wear a badge for the company or something. And they easily could have had you have your own house. And You get to create the town area, but it would be really cool if it was interactive. Like you could go to the restaurant with a villager or your friends or go shopping.If it was smashed together with new leaf, with maybe some of the things I suggested above, it would be a lot more interesting and fun. It would last a lot longer and be better for replaying. Overall its decent, especially for younger people, but They really could have done a lot more with it. I kind of hope that maybe someday they will make another one and it will incorporate more things like the ones I have suggested.Pros: I love designing stuff in games, especially houses. My personal houses in MMO's I can spend hours on them. In The Sims I get more joy out of designing the houses than I do actually playing with the sims themselves. With this game it's no different. The reason I chose the BUNDLE is because both my boyfriend and myself do not possess the NEW 3ds so any amiibo functionality would need the reader. The reader on it's own is 19.99 so by getting it with a game I'd love it was a no-brainer.It came with one card and the card packs aren't very expensive but as far as I've played there hasn't been a real need for them unless you specifically want one NPC. The cards let you decorate that NPC's house I guess. Like I said I haven't really seen a real "need" for it and you can certainly play the entire game (I've completed all of the main objectives and just pick it up to do the random NPC's that visit now) without them, so don't think it's like a micro-pay thing because it isn't at all.There are only two "cons" to this game:1. I completed all the main objectives (designing the town) in about 10 hours. For the price it doesn't seem like a very good deal but you do have to consider that there are over 200 or so NPCs that you can decorate, and you can redecorate the town when you unlock more items later on.2. You don't have your own house to design. It would have been really cool if we could decorate our own homes, or if they had added in a system where you get paid for your designs like a score of how well you do and you can use that to upgrade your own house. However, there is nothing like that here which is odd to me because "bells" are a pretty interesting currency in the other animal crossing games. Oh well.If you have been playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on the 3DS then this game is a must. You will enjoy this game even if you're new to Animal Crossing. It is a very well designed game that is great fun to play. The amiibo reader that is included in this bundle is essential to using amiibo or amiibo cards on the previous 3DS models. Great quality!Update: Nov.18,2016 HHD can be linked with Animal Crossing New Leaf Welcome amiibo for the 3DS system. This enables you to purchase some of the large sized HHD items from the catalog in Nook's shop.I've played other AC series games before and was pretty excited to get this one. The product itself is definitely worth it - getting the game and the NFC reader for this price is definitely worth it (less expensive than buying them separately). The game is also fun. As the title of the game suggests, you design homes for the villagers. Though the villagers have few requirements, you can really design the houses anyway you like - without worrying about how much bells you have! Would recommend if you love the AC series - would not recommend if you expect this game to be like the other AC games (there is no fishing, bug catching, etc). And yay Amazon and shipping options I got mine earlier than expected (:Everything works well, just not the most fun game - easily bored, you might want to check out more reviews and gameplay!Actually it was for my youngest sibling, & likes it a little specifically I wanted the NFC Reader but why not let my youngest sibling try a new game for onceWEW! I loved Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and now I get to love Happy Home Designer. Starts slow, you work your way up to bigger projects and it's great. Would recommend.