These games are best-suited to portables, with their pick-up-and-play nature. Play a few minutes before you hit the sack, or sink in a few hours -- it's all good! I'll be downloading this so it's always ready to go.
Lots of new stuff this time around:
- Your house can be expanded to seven rooms, and the basement can be fully furnished, as well. You can customize the exterior of your house, too (castles, pagodas, etc, with picket fences, hedges, etc -- even different mailboxes).
- Apply custom patterns to furniture and individual PARTS of clothing. You can hang items on the walls. Clothing now includes pants, boots, etc; you can even wear swimsuits and go barefoot. And custom patterns can be shared via QR codes -- no painstaking pixel-by-pixel reproduction necessary; just point your camera and shoot!
- Snap screenshots wherever, whenever, to show the village to GAF
- Choose where your house goes, where various buildings go; issue ordinances such as store hours (I.E. "a town that never sleeps").
- As mayor, collect public donations to build benches, bridges, fountains, light posts, playscapes, lighthouses, windmills, etc, and hold ribbon-cutting ceremonies for them.
- Utilize up to 10 custom tiles in your village, instead of eight. Some people have turned their village into an entire pixel-perfect replica of Dragon Quest maps this way!
- Stack multiple fruit in one inventory slot, and donate all of your fossils/fish/insects at once. New "perfect" fruit fetches an even higher price on the market!
- Work part-time at the coffee shop, go picnicking outside, drink coffee and enjoy ice cream outside, go camping, meet new villagers visiting as campers (or igloo-dwellers in the winter), go swimming and snorkeling and diving for treasure and fish, sit on a bench and look up at the sky to see shooting stars, the aurora borealis, etc.
- There is a 50 percent increase in items to collect over City Folk, which is a STAGGERING number of items, as well as FREE DLC. And the vast majority of furniture can be fully customized now via patterns.
- The mall across the train tracks is vastly improved, with a disco club, dedicated shoe store, dedicated gardening shop, and so on. You can meet past villagers here and even hire someone to pull your weeds, iirc.
- Check out a model village north of the mall to see homes received via StreetPass (and maybe SpotPass?), and order duplicates of their custom furniture, or simply be inspired for your own home.
- Upload a duplicate of your village online, for others to visit and do as they please, with NO RISK of vandalism since it is only a dream. Likewise, you can visit the villages of others, with no risk of vandalizing their town.
- Visit the perpetually summery Resort Island to unwind or enjoy minigames like timed hedge maze races with up to three others online.
- All real-world holidays return, new and improved, as well as a variety of all-new holidays.
- Turf no longer suffers degradation -- your land will stay in mint condition! And watered flowers sparkle to indicate they've been watered.