Heck, it’s almost exactly three months away. I’ve found myself both excited and a bit anxious about it so I thought it’d be nice to talk about my current thoughts on the game, plus a little more on the new screenshots that were shared last month.
Besides exciting news of the game also being translated into both Latin American Spanish and Spain-Spanish, they also showed a new regional/culture-based item– the China Poblana Dress.
This confirms a handful of things:
1. We will get sleeve styles besides length, as shown in Pocket Camp. I adore poofy sleeves and bell sleeves so getting both of those in Pocket Camp and seeing some kind of confirmation that at least one of those variants can come over, and honestly likely more, is really exciting.
2. Similarly, another thing I really liked from Pocket Camp: Full-length gowns/long dresses and it genuinely looks great.
3. Culture-based items are back.
That last part isn’t really surprising, but I’ve found the number one question I’ve had with New Horizons is wondering how they will work in this game. Will something on the game cartridge or what eShop you bought it from determine it even though it can work no matter what account plays it? Is it determined by what country your NNID is set to that starts the game up first? Do you get to select at the start like Pokemon?
New Leaf had regional exclusives for the following:
North America
Europe – With some item changes for New Years Eve depending on if you were playing in French, German, Spanish, or British English.
Japan
Korea
And now we know there will, at the least, be variants between Latin America and Spain, but also had been told they were taking into effect those in the Southern Hemisphere as well so they will have the proper weather. This is actually really exciting, both in the sense of just incorporating so many places, but also working together with friends to get things done with the various fish and bugs for the museum.
There’s always the question though of how far they may take it– will there be Region Exclusive Bugs/Fish? I feel like that could start getting rather complicated, especially when online costs money and many people had trouble finding people to even connect with for the few items there were. It could even get complicated as some items, like during Setsubun and Hina Matsuri involved items you can buy from the shop and not all of them could be re-ordered through the catalog.
But I find out of everything, this is what I keep coming back around to and what I really want to know most. How will it be determined? How many items are there?
I’ve always been in the party of wishing the items could be gotten in every game along with the events. It’d be a great way to share different cultures and learn about them. If it wasn’t for Japanese Cultural items being in the Gamecube version, I would’ve never spent so much time learning about different holidays in Japan and really getting to know their culture. And sure, maybe I still would’ve gotten interested down the line, but right now, that is what ended up pulling me in at the very start.
I still think a good compromise would be once you experience an event in another person’s town, you can somehow start celebrating it in your town too. Considering you help build up the Island, I feel like there’s still a chance that could happen.
I’m hoping we’ll get a Nintendo Direct next month as it feels like we’re still lacking a lot of information– even the official site is kind of just an overview. Regardless, I’m looking forward to whatever they may bring and I can’t wait to get started on my New Horizons playthrough.