Animal Crossing: City Folk

To preface all of this: I am a 22 year old male, and I love me some Animal Crossing. I've been addicted to this quaint and relaxing series since the Gamecube release, so it was no surprise that I'd gobble on the sequel on the Wii. As such, I'm approaching this game from the standpoint of someone who has played both the original and Wild World, and I'd imagine this review would be most useful to you if you're also on the same page.   

Predictably, the general structure of the game is identical to the previous two iterations. Same premise, same devious loan shark wearing a raccoon costume, and same goal: live your virtual life however you want. Of all the things to keep, the Sims meets Harvest Moon element is certainly the most welcome. There is no end game or end goal in these titles. You can collect bugs, furnish your house, make friends with animals, or simply go fishing every day. You'll be playing it every day thanks to the real world clock and calender. 
 
Things begin to feel real familiar real quickly, though. You're not going to find much else to do in your town; there are no new hobbies, nothing more you can do with the museum, Nook upgrades the exact same way, etc. etc. To be fair, there are minor changes here and there, such as the introduction of silver tools (between normal and gold), but everything ends up feeling very stale within the first few weeks, let alone the first few months. For a game that relies so heavily on replay, it's disappointing they'd be so willing to keep old tropes. 
 
So what about the titular city? After all, this is a feature not seen in any other titles. Unfortunately, they took this new concept and filled it with old ones. Almost every shop or person in the city is someone you've met before, such as Redd or Gracie. Instead of being a special and unique visitor to your town, they've been turned into depressingly generic shop owners. Any benefit of their constant accessibility is destroyed once you realize they barely change their stock (Gracie only has seasonal items, Redd changes once a week), which further drives you away from ever visiting the city.  
 

Worst of all, particularly for a "communication" game, is the castration of villagers. I, uh, don't mean that literally, of course. But you'll find villagers barely have any sort of personality or things to say. They'll repeat themselves constantly, even giving you generic tutorial advice weeks after you've started playing. Gone too is the ability to ask them for jobs or errands to run, though they'll still give you something to do on a very rare occasion. It's frustrating and downright dumb that they'd remove so many elements that made interacting with villagers an interesting experience.
 
Then there are a myriad of weird and sometimes downright confusing design choices. Grass can be killed via too much running, which is supposed to make neat looking paths. Instead, your entire village looks like a wasteland after a month or so of solid errand running. They also decided to reuse the Wild World music for the hourly tunes, which many fans have called the worst of the series. 
    

All in all, City Folk is not a bad game by itself, and if you were a newcomer to the series then you might even think it's a great game. But City Folk gives the illusion of adding more content while in reality removing most of what made the series compelling in the first place. There's less to do and see on a daily basis, and you'll quickly get bored of what little the game has to offer.