It has been a good week for fans of the Animal Crossing franchise. The long-awaited new downloadable content update has come out for “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” at midnight on Nov. 5. The paid downloadable content pack, titled “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise,” comes after a large free content update that introduced many quality-of-life upgrades as well as thousands of new items and game features. The DLC pack tasks the character to work as a home planner on an archipelago to help villagers achieve their dream vacation home.
“Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise” expands upon those features added in the free content update. However, unlike the content update, the downloadable content pack is not free.
“Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise” costs $24.99 from the Nintendo eShop by itself, but in order for players to participate in the online features they must also have a Nintendo Online membership.
The price of the online memberships varies depending on how long the membership lasts, but the DLC pack can be bundled with the Nintendo Online Expansion Pack membership for $49.99. If you buy a year-long individual Nintendo Online membership in addition to “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise,” the price almost adds up to the cost of the original base game.
However, I think the price is worth it. From what I’ve played, “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise” adds so much new content that it feels like a new game, albeit played a little differently. You can get seemingly endless hours and gameplay out of this DLC pack, as well as new items and features you can bring back to your base game and use on your island. There are new plants, new furniture and new characters. The game focuses on building, so there are new building techniques as well like half walls and pillars.
The thing I am enjoying the most about “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise” is that you can interact with more villagers than you do in the base game. In “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” you can choose ten of the over 900 villagers to stay on your island, and while you can change out who stays on your island, it isn’t an easy task. In the DLC, you can design homes and talk to villagers you don’t usually interact with and get an idea of their personality based on what they want included in their paradise home.
I also love the attention to detail. You can dress up in your own uniform to fit in with the Paradise Planning team, build community spaces on the island for villagers to attend and get to know the new characters added to the game a little bit better.
These interactions combined with the new aspects that I can use on my own island are why I truly feel like it is worthwhile to buy “Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise.” I love decorating and to be able to do that for villagers and not just myself in the game is so much fun. It feels like a whole new game and gives you something else to do while you play “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” to avoid burnout.
