4 ways Animal Crossing can learn from Pokemon Pokopia for its next game

When Pokemon Pokopia was first announced for Nintendo Switch 2, I don’t think any of us really saw the game’s incredible success coming. However, it released to rave reviews just recently, and it’s so polished and well thought-out that it truly gives Animal Crossing a run for its money. In fact, many of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ biggest problems – namely its lackluster multiplayer and numerous design hurdles and limitations – feel like they were specifically addressed in Pokemon Pokopia. As a result, Pokopia actually feels like another Animal Crossing game – just with an overarching story and a bigger focus on progression. Compared to New Horizons, Pokopia has been met with an outpouring of love and support from the Pokemon community – in fact, it may be the best-received Pokemon title of the past several years. So today, we’re going over all of the bits and pieces Animal Crossing could lift from Pokopia for its next title.

Unique personalities

In Pokemon Pokopia, every single Pokemon has a unique personality. Lines of dialogue are shared between them, but many Pokemon have tons of unique dialogue lines plus unique conversations with other specific Pokemon. In Animal Crossing, villagers are divided into one of eight personalities – Lazy, Cranky, Smug, and Jock for the males, and Snooty, Normal, Sisterly, and Peppy for the females. Every villager with the Normal personality has the exact same dialogue, every villager with the Lazy personality has the exact same dialogue, and so on. No villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have dialogue unique to their character, which is a big pitfall. One of New Horizons’ biggest complaints is that you’d often see the same lines over and over again, since you’re bound to have more than one of at least one personality type on your island.

No matter which way they go about it, the next Animal Crossing needs more villager dialogue variety. Nintendo could introduce additional new personalities, but it’d also be good to add dialogue specific to unique villagers. For example, why not give Chrissy and Francine unique dialogue with each other since they’re a duo? Or Lolly and Bonbon, since Lolly’s catchphrase happens to be bonbon? Those are just a few ideas, but unique lines like these would make Animal Crossing’s villagers feel more like characters than frameworks, if that makes sense. It’d also be nice if they got a little mean again, to further separate the game from Pokopia, though I doubt we’ll see that happen.

Better multiplayer

This is one of Animal Crossing’s biggest weaknesses: you spend all this time making your island pretty and presentable. Then you invite a friend, and they follow you around and look at your town… and within ten minutes, they’ve seen everything. Now you have nothing else to do, and the visit is over. You spend hundreds of hours on your island, only for someone to see it all in a few minutes!

In Pokemon Pokopia, multiplayer isn’t perfect either – for one, other players can’t come to your towns and decorate or build themselves (unless you’re in Pallet Town). But it’s an absolutely massive improvement over New Horizons. Pokopia players can visit each other and purchase exclusive items and recipes from a daily rotation, which incentivizes playing with your friends every day. Furthermore, Pallet Town does let your friends come over and decorate as they please, and the area itself is fairly large – so all your friends can come build their own houses or help you build something of a larger scale. Cloud Islands are even better, and remain available to log on to even when the host isn’t around. So even though Pokemon Pokopia won’t let other players help you build up your main areas, there are plenty of options to build together with little to no restrictions. Animal Crossing really needs to learn from this, because its own multiplayer feels like nothing but restrictions.

No arbitrary restrictions

I’ve played Animal Crossing: New Horizons for almost 2,000 hours, which means I can say with confidence that the game has far, far too many arbitrary design restrictions that make fleshing out your island much more difficult than Pokemon Pokopia. For one, placing trees and water feels like a constant uphill battle – trees can’t be placed directly next to cliffs or rivers, for instance, whereas in Pokopia there is no limit or restriction to the placement of trees. Pokopia’s final Ditto transformation, which is unlocked after beating the game, also makes outdoor decoration incredibly easy – you can place multiple tiles at once, levitate in midair, and place blocks much faster. New Horizons, on the other hand, does require that you place all outdoor furniture manually, which can be tough if the land you have to work with is small or narrow. Furthermore, Pokopia has a greater variety of flowers and bushes to decorate with, although it doesn’t have Animal Crossing’s in-depth flower reproduction system. Pokopia also lets you build and move facilities like the Pokemon Center, whereas Animal Crossing’s Resident Services and Airport are stuck where they are for good. I could go on and on, but the next Animal Crossing really needs to lift many of the restrictions that make outdoor decoration feel like kind of a chore at times.

Easier crafting recipes

My opinions are kind of mixed on crafting in the Animal Crossing series, but I get the feeling it’s here to stay. However, I’ve played New Horizons for almost 2,000 hours and I still don’t have all the recipes. This is because you aren’t really guaranteed to get new ones – when you have as many hours in the game as I do, most of the recipes you receive are repeats. Your villagers will give you duplicates, you’ll get duplicates from the beach, and you’ll shoot down duplicates from balloons.

In fact, balloons are the best way to get recipes in Animal Crossing, and it’s kind of a lame way of obtaining new ones. You have to scan the beach north to south until you see a balloon, and even then, it’s not guaranteed to be a crafting recipe – and even if it is, it’s not guaranteed to be one that you need. This means you’ll wind up with tons of duplicates, and I understand you’re supposed to share these with other players, but the process of dropping these items one-by-one for them to check and see if they need each individual recipe is awkward and clunky. Pokopia does this much better by letting players purchase recipes directly from your PC, no item involved.

There are numerous other ways Animal Crossing could learn from Pokemon Pokopia, too. That said, it’s probably going to be a very long time until we see another Animal Crossing – the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition’s release earlier this year implies a new title won’t be available for a good while, though this is of course unconfirmed.

What improvements would you like to see in the next Animal Crossing game on Nintendo Switch 2? Let us know in the comments down below.