"A fantastic game on multiplayer, though the online is butchered by hackers"

I was rather excited upon receiving this game. It had a huge fan base thanks to the above-average Gamecube Animal Crossing, and within two weeks it was already an absolute hit.
Despite my excitement, I was rather disappointed to begin with. The game starts slowly with some tedious jobs including planting trees, delivering items, and posting a message on the town message board. Not necessarily the height of excitement. To be honest after an hour you're left wondering what all the AC-love is about.
The first week is slow. Collecting small amounts of money in the form of fruit. Donating fossils into the museum only to realise you only have the tail of that precious dinosaur. Looking at that one fish swim bleary eyed around the fish tank. Realising you rooms, or should I say room, looks very ugly due to you owning hardly any items from the same set. And yet you come back every day in the hope that Truffles might have left your village, or that Nooks Cranny might have an interesting item in stock for once.

And trust me, after a week, Wild World gets FAR FAR better.

The first time you notice the improvement is when you run over to Nooks Cranny, only to realise it has upgraded. And with a bigger stock comes FAR better items. Then you go to the clothes shop. There's actually some nice looking clothes in for once. Lost in a haze of new items and new clothes you run back to your house, and on your way bump in to Sahara who, after you help her out, gives you an amazingly cool wallpaper. And when you do get back to your house you realise it's not a tiny little shack anymore and actually looks nice.

THAT is the true magic of Wild World. What starts out as a hard grind for money and museum pieces, turns into a town brimming with life and energy. Every day brings something new, whether it be Gulliver's spaceship crashing into your town, or K.K. Slider playing some amazing melodies over at The Roost. Whether it be an elusive fossil find, or the fish catch of the century. Whether it be a house upgrade, or an awesome new item which compliments your house like no item before it.
And just like these big things make a huge difference, so do the small things. Noticing you're getting a tan during Summer, seeing your villagers wearing your own shirt designs or even adopting each others catchphrases. These things make the game truly worth playing.

It is very much an addiction. Every day you'll have to check Nooks for new items. Every day you'll have to find those fossils. Every day you'll have to go see whatever villager is visiting. Every day you'll have to earn those few extra bells towards your house. Every day you'll find yourself loving this game more and more.

This game doesn't try to stop you loving it either. The graphics are nice without being to glossy and overindulgent. The characters are cute without seeming babyish. The dialogue is funny without getting on your nerves. And the music…
This is the first portable game since the GBA's FF6 that forces me to have the music on. The music is just beautiful. Every hour you get a new piece of music playing in the background, and I wouldn't be the first to say that I've stayed up long into the morning to hear all the different musical themes. And if the hourly musical themes don't suit your tastes, you can instead listen to songs you get off of K.K. Slider every Saturday evening. Theses K.K. songs play on CD players in your house, and it is very nice to have such a wide range of pieces, from a driving electric guitar riff, to a laid-back country & western piece, to stuff that verges on neoclassical. As you can imagine, the music playing can greatly affect the mood of a room.

And whilst we're talking about rooms lets talk about house size, and furniture sets. The storyline basically says you're arriving in a town and need to pay off debts on your house. Of course every time you pay off the debt your house is expanded and a new debt is put in place. After a couple months your house will have upgraded, from a one roomed shack, into a complete and utter mansion. Each room in this mansion can hold Wallpaper, Carpet, and up to twenty of the five hundred items. And I don't just mean chairs and tables (though you can have those in your house if you so wish). Ever wanted a Well in your house? How about a scale model of the Moon that floats and spins on its own? Or a steamroller? Their really is little end to the number of imaginative ways you can set up your house, from the simple joy of having a real life setup of tables and chairs, to the brilliance that is a Space-themed room, to the obscurity of a neon-themed room, or you own personal bug museum.

And there's already a Museum in your town, which stocks Paintings, Bugs, Fish and Fossils. Or at least it can stock Paintings, Bugs, Fish and Fossils, if you're willing to help collect and donate them. The paintings you get off a crazy old merchant called Crazy Redd, who comes to your town every week to sell items. Most weeks he will have a painting for sale, all of which are real life painting, such as the Mona Lisa. The bugs you catch by running up to a bug and swiping your bug net at them, which is oft-times easier said than done: though there is nothing more fun than spending five minutes chasing a dragonfly through your town, equally there is nothing more frustrating than finding the elusive scorpion, only to be stung and wake up outside you house. You catch fish by fishing at ponds in your town and on the beach by the sea. You toss your fishing line in, and the moment that a exclamation mark appears you pull in your rod at the hope of having another fish to add to your collection. Both the fish and bugs change monthly as the year progresses, which really helps keep the game addictive. Fossils are gained by searching your town every day for cracks in the ground. When you see a crack you can dig it up, and take it to be identified in the hope that it's a new one.

The yearly cycle helps keep this game fresh and interesting for at least four or five months. As I've already mentioned the available bugs and fish change every month, but this isn't the only change. As you progress through the months you notice colour changes around your town. You'll turn on the game at the start of Summer to find everything looking fresh and new, and in Winter you'll undoubtedly notice the snow that covers your town like a sheet.

Your fellow town members are a variety of animals, from Wolves, to Squirrels to the elusive Monkeys. Unfortunately many of the town members are very ugly, including a personal pet hate of mine that is Truffles. And when you do get a cool town member, there's no way to stop them leaving without checking their house every day. The houses of your fellow town members are often ugly on the inside, and unfortunately you have no direct control over how they place things in their room. The dialogue between you and the town members is often amusing, however it quickly becomes old once you've heard them say the same thing six times.

So that's a quick overview of the single-player, now onto the multi-player.

There is something intrinsically awesome about running around your friend's towns, hitting each other with nets, and racing to see who can catch a decent bug first. It also expands the enjoyability a lot as all of a sudden you'll find yourself bartering with your friend for the Sahara carpet you want, or desperately trying to contact your friend so that you can send Katie (a kitten who gives you rewards when you send her to other people's towns) over to their town.
The online play furthers this even more as one day you'll be able to surprise one of your friends by randomly showing up in their town. The online play also helps you to create loads of new friends, as you invite them over to your town purely so that you can hang out.

Unfortunately going online also opens your town up to the predators in the Animal Crossing world…the hackers.

This is where online play can get really bad on this game…

All of a sudden you'll find yourself being constantly on the guard against seeders (people who put new buildings in your town often to damage your save file, or stop you from being able to enter important buildings). And if your new found friend isn't a seeder, then watch out as he may steal plants off of you, and tear down your trees instead. This makes making new friends a dangerous business.

What about using online play for business instead? Selling those extra few items so that you can make a few bells to pay off your debt. Good luck is all I can say. The economy has been ruined by hackers overproducing items, meaning some items don't even sell for what a quarter of what they should do. However there's something even more sinister about these hackers…
...This games fun and addiction is based on slowly getting the perfect house, the perfect museum etc. However with hackers all those items you want, all those bugs and fish you need, they're all available in an instant. This sounds brilliant for the first couple weeks. However once you've got everything you've ever wanted from the hackers, you suddenly feel annoyed at them, as they have managed to steal everything that made this game magical, away from you.

So in short…
This is a brilliant game that is highly addictive and keeps getting better and better as you play it. It has lots to do, and you have all the time in the world to do it. Quite simply, everyone should play this. But for Nook's sake, stay away from the hackers as they only serve to steal the magic of this brilliant game away from you.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/18/07