Animal Crossing: City folk (or sometimes called "lets go to the city") is the third instalment of the Animal Crossing series. There isn't any aim to the game at all, it seems. Other than living in a peaceful little village that you get to name with other bipedal animals and visiting "The city" where there is fancy designer shops, a homeless dog that shines shoes, and a suspicious looking shop that sells fraudulent paintings.

You start the game on a bus, where you get to name your character, name the town you are going, and enter discussion with a character called "Rover" (who you will see every time you attempt to start the game) and the bus driver called Kapp'n on the way to start a new life in a new town. You are dropped off, sent to the town hall, introduced to the old tortoise mayor, and then sent to choose one of four possible homes to live it. 

After choosing your home, (which is empty, it turns out) you are confronted by the local shopkeeper, who informs you that you're neck deep in debt (You don't get the house for free. You have a mortgage to pay off, although not paying off the mortgage...really has no effect other than you can't expand your house and you have less room for furniture), and to help, pretty much forces you to take a position as a part time worker at his shop, Nooks Cranny. You end up spending the next few minutes running around the town planting trees and flowers, posting notices on the town notice board, sending letters to the villagers advertising the shop (to which I'm sure they were thrilled to receive), delivering carpets and furniture to the villagers...until eventually he declares he has no more jobs for you, and let's you go without paying you at all really (although he does take a paltry amount of your mortgage before sending you on your way.)

After you have finished working for Tom Nook...the game stops having aims really. In order to pay off any loans though and expand your house, or to buy any furniture or clothing, you have to earn money by collecting items in various ways, and selling them off...to Tom Nook. Essentially, the majority of your money will be going to Tom Nook. Something a lot of players resent. 

At first, earning money is done by shaking trees to collect fruit (your town will have one of the five fruits available in the game. Selling fruits from other towns will earn you more money, and is a way to earn income. However, unless you know someone else with the game and visit there town over WiFi, you can't get other types of fruit than the type you have been randomly assigned) or by collecting shells from the beach. After selling these to Tom Nook, you can buy whatever tools he has available that day. Thankfully, they change every day. Tom Nook also sells furniture (some of which is completely useless, odd looking, and you'd wonder why on earth anyone would have some big carpet covered mountain in there house), flowers, and tools.

The tools basically have different uses, and all the key to earning money (known as "bells" in game). The Fishing Rod is basically used to fish in the ocean and the river, the Net used to catch bugs (although this is less useful in the window), the shovel dig up fossils and "gyroids" (basically metal things that look like a tin can that basically make a very annoying noise if you put them in your house. Thankfully, however, you can either sell them, or give them to another character who has some use for them...but we'll come to him later) wherever there is a star shaped crack on the ground, slingshots that shoot down mysterious, magical floating parcels that float over your town carried by a balloon carrying what could be rare furniture (somehow defying gravity and the laws of physics), an axe that can cut down trees, and a timer which does very little...but time things. 

The seasons change in real time, the environment changing with it. Different fish will appear in the winter than will in the summer. During the summer for example, you may encounter a sharks fin sticking out of ocean, which will lead you to a catch that will earn you a whole load of bells. Summer also seems to be the only time that you can catch bugs...or when there are any bugs in the village at all. In fact, about the only bug you seem to be able to catch in the winter is a pill bug which was scurry past you if you rudely hit the rock it was deciding to hide in (and mysteriously, rocks sometimes have bags of money hiding in them. Someone in the village seems to make an effort of hiding a lot of money in the cracks of rocks, waiting for someone to hit it with a shovel and for it all to burst out...)

Thankfully, to solve this, Nintendo has allowed us to change the date! YAY! The downside is...that if you spent ages growing flowers and keeping your town weed free...your town will now be covered in weeds, all the flowers you spent hours lovingly caring for wilted, the villagers will all be mad because you went AWOL for a long time without informing them (I once changed the date to 2099. Nobody had aged a day. But they were all annoyed), and perhaps even moved out leaving a "I wish we were friends like we used to be" letter in your mailbox for you to pick up. But...this does allow you to change the furniture that Tom Nook is selling, and otherwise catch fish and bugs that you couldn't if you played on real time. 

There's also "festivals" in the game. Some are real life festivals (New years eve is celebrated, as is Valentines, Mothers Day), some seem to be made up and completely bizarre (Such as "mole day"). Some will allow you to gain furniture and clothing you can't buy in shops or gain in other ways. Some will feature a "catch the biggest fish" you can tournament. Some will just cause the villagers to go on and on and on about it until you are sick to death of hearing about it. 

The city seems to be the only new addition to the game (everything else seems to have been in the games predecessor, Animal Crossing:Wild World for the Nintendo DS, released a few years earlier). The city contains very few things that are actually new in the game, however. One of the new things is the addition of the "Designer Department Store."  What this actually is, is a shop that sells very expensive furniture and clothing that rarely changes and is occasionally visited by the very fashionable giraffe Gracey Grace who will declare that you are very fashionable if you turn up to the shop dressed as an Orange. 

The city also contains a theatre, where for a cost, you can watch an odd looking creature making extremely bad jokes (but on the plus side, you learn "emotions", which you can then use when talking via WiFi, or just because they look good), an office which judges how good looking your house is by mysteriously sneaking into it in the early hours of the morning and gives a score of it (and then, if it's the highest scoring house, making an exact replica of it in the back room), a hairdresser which is essentially just...a hair dresser, and an auction house. Which was pretty useless and did absolutely nothing. The game also introduces animals that aren't just frolicking around in a forest fishing and catching butterflies all day long with the addition of a Shoe Shiner who will sometimes appear in the city, seemingly down on his luck. And if you walk down a back alley, you will end stumbling across a dodgy store run by a suspicious looking fox called Redd, who will always took about hiding something illegal from the "Fuzz" every-time you approach, before realizing it's you and continuing to sell you some dodgy wares. 

Continuing on, the game also installs fear into the players heart if they do something as mundane as forgetting to save. Yes...it does not like it if you do not save. The character of Resetti makes return, popping out of the ground if you forget to save your game and giving you a long lecture that turns more and more angry the more times he comes, that is effective in reminding you to save, simply so you don't have to bother spending ten minutes dealing with the annoying mole. Supposedly, it was effective enough that it was making younger children cry, and Nintendo had to release a warning on the game advising parents to make sure there child saved the game so Resetti did not appear. So...if you are a younger player who may be upset by this, I advise you remember to save each time. Of course, you may also find Resetti's any tirades hilarious, and keep "resetting", or quitting without saving to allow them to keep happening. 

So...Animal Crossing is a light-hearted game with humour, wit and peacefulness. Despite the fact that there is very few changes from the DS version of the game, it is still a fun and relaxing game to play. There is a satisfaction to have by finally managing to pay off the seemingly endless debt that Tom Nook forces on you by making you expand your house each time you manage to pay off a loan, and finally managing to complete the museum. And although the game is slow...it can be extremely rewarding to watch your time change as time passes, and to sit and watch villagers come and go. 

nice long review good job otherside

Nice job on this review, for your very fist, I must say that this is amazing, to make this in one day isn't easy either, this review is very exceptional and you did a great job on it. Not only is it lengthy and detailed which makes for a great review on its own, but it is also organized and easy to read since you broke it down into categories. Personally I think that makes it look all the more professional, so I am glad you made it that way. 

You broke it down into categories which is great, however, I think you could use the scores you gave the game in your review like this for example: 


Graphics: 8 
The game had very good graphics and the scenery and characters were clear...which is why I gave it an 8 

This is just a suggestion, there isn't a strict format saying it has to be that way, but I think it would work to wrap your review around the scoring while tying it in with the story. Overall this is perhaps the single best first review I have seen from a newbie before, nice work and this is truly amazing. Keep up the great work and keep reviewing because you have a lot of potential, if this is what you are capable of on your very first review, imagine what you could do over time!