Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete review - ditching the microtransactions for a more forgiving experience

The last time I wrote for Eurogamer, it was to tell the story of how Nintendo announced the end of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp as a freemium live service game and sent me into a tailspin of despair. The only thing helping me through this bleak time was the fact that, tucked at the very end of Nintendo's email, was the revelation that my save data could live on in a paid app - Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete - which would arrive in "the future".

Well, the future is NOW and I've been playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete since about three minutes after a pre-order download notification plopped onto my lock screen. Not continuously, I should say. I took a break to have a bath at some point, and another one to crochet a nudibranch and watch The Fly, but I did play pretty intensely. The wealth of knowledge and experience gleaned in this period is what I will now share with you.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is a very similar experience to the now-defunct Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. You, a relatively competent human with a gigantic head, must contend with a collection of hapless but adorable animals and their requests as you build up a wealth of objects with which to decorate a little campsite, a camper van and a chalet. New players must start from scratch, gradually acquiring furniture and making friends in order to live out their deepest campsite manager fantasies. Old players can start fresh or pick up where they left off… Well, they can if they linked their Pocket Camp save data to a Nintendo account.

The latter is a potential point of friction, and worth discussing a little here in case you are a returning player reading this review and thinking of resurrecting your camp in the new app. Y'see, the save data transfer is only possible if you linked a Nintendo account to your save before the live service game was switched off.

There were plenty of in-game warnings about account linking, and another warning in the Complete trailer. But there was no overlap period between the two apps being available, and thus no grace period where one could spot the new app, realise there was a linked account requirement for save data transfers, and rectify the problem in the moment. Rather, by the time Complete launched earlier this month, the availability (or not) of your save data was already set. This struck me as a strangely punishing way of handling the switchover timeline.

Once you're in the game, the core loops are pure Animal Crossing. There's crafting! Decorating! Dressing up! Fetching a coconut for an implausibly sporty hamster! If you've imported save data, you'll also keep your player character level, your friendship levels with each animal character, your bells (the non-premium currency), crafting materials, items, layouts, clothing, and saved outfits.

What you won't find in Pocket Camp Complete are Leaf Tickets (the premium currency) or paid subscription plans. Ditching Leaf Tickets means no more microtransactions (hooray!), and the best features of the subscription plans have actually been integrated into Complete so everyone can access them, including the option of appointing a camp caretaker animal, the journal sticker system, and the provision of extra layout and outfit slots.

There is also a new currency called Leaf Tokens, which is definitely not the same thing as Leaf Tickets under a different name (it is). Leaf Tokens live in the same place where Leaf Tickets used to be onscreen, but unlike its premium namesake, they're now very easy to earn simply by playing the game. They can be spent on a lot of the same things that Leaf Tickets were for, too, such as the golden fishing rod, terrain options, fortune cookies and more. I think I might be slightly drunk on Leaf Tokens, to be honest with you. I've accumulated so many in such a short space of time!

In fact, after seven long years of scrimping and saving Tickets for campsite terrain options, I'd become used to not being able to justify the expense of acquiring a complete themed set because you had to purchase the themed foreground, middle ground, background and sky separately. Now, with this influx of Leaf Tokens, I'll admit that I went on what can only be described as a geological shopping spree – my camp can contain oceans! Jungles! Bamboo forests! Cobblestones! Truly, I never knew such exhilaration until now.

Crafting times still apply, however, which came as something of a shock after throwing £3/month into the Nintendo abyss to reduce these times as part of the old Happy Helper Plan. I'd been paying that fee for so long that I'd forgotten that crafting time restrictions even existed, though my abundance of Leaf Tokens did help with this somewhat, as I can bung the crafting llama a wodge of them and he can shave six hours off the crafting of all future objects. Not that it's all that obvious, mind, as you have to poke the plus sign over the llama's head in order to do so and not the more logical thing of interacting with the crafting object slots themselves. The UI can be truly obtuse sometimes.

The other big change is that Complete does not require a constant internet connection while you're playing. This is great news for those of us who want to while away hours on train journeys by creating little camp tableaux. In fact, I spent an hour curled up in a coffee shop with appalling phone signal just tinkering with my current pre-Christmas cabin layout - a feat that would have been nigh on impossible in the original Pocket Camp.

The only downside to offline play is losing the (admittedly very limited) social side of the Pocket Camp experience. I was sorry to see that go, as my little collection of friends had found ways to express genuine affection through Pocket Camp's restrictive interactions. Friends are now accumulated via QR codes on customisable Friend Cards and you can bump into their avatars in the new Whistle Pass area. Whistle Pass is where the Animal Crossing universe's only musician, KK Slider hangs out. (I have opinions about KK Slider, but I suppose I am not here to review him. Yet.)

In terms of content, new events and cookies are scheduled until September 2025, and past events will repeat on a four-year cycle. I've played the first two events, and they were a lot easier to "finish" (by which I mean "obtain all the items of furniture") than those in the live service game. That's excellent for new players, but old hands might be wrongfooted by the new rhythms.

I internalised the three-hour check-in cycle you need to optimise playing the live service game years ago. As a result, I've overshot the fishing target by such a long way that I'm now drowning in the Toy Day bookshelves which are offered as one of the event rewards. I just threw seven of them into one of the game's overflow storage warehouses just so I didn't have to look at them anymore.

The above will tell you that I played Pocket Camp in such a deeply ridiculous way that it necessarily affects how I play and experience Complete. But, trying to put myself in the mind of a chill and normal player, I think Pocket Camp Complete offers an adorable, snackable game of collecting and creating. The food items are a particular delight, and I defy anyone not to melt when they find the coffee and cake item where the latte foam art is designed to look like Marshal's lovely little face!

The removal of the Leaf Ticket economy also means you can probably get most of the items you want by popping in now and again, then settle in for a longer session where you arrange your new treasures for maximum effect.

On the rougher side, the UI remains incredibly busy. Even I still have little points of confusion and we've established how much time I spend on this thing. There are fussy systems which no longer make sense without the accompanying freemium social shenanigans. For example, because of the way three types of fruit were distributed to incentivise market box usage in Pocket Camp, the only way I can obtain grapes in Complete is to pester the avatars of particular friends in Whistle Pass. Plus, I defy anyone to enjoy the clunky furniture overflow storage options in the late game.

I also want to point out that, even though the microtransactions are gone, the vestiges of the freemium model are still embedded throughout. This means that, despite not making constant overtures towards your bank account, Complete can still imitate some of the same loops of predatory gaming, just with Tokens instead of Tickets, so parents (and games critics with a weakness for loot boxes) might want to bear that in mind.

For existing Pocket Camp players with linked accounts, Complete offers a way to keep playing, as well as a way to preserve the defunct game's save data in an accessible format (at least until upkeep by the developer falls out of sync with mobile operating systems or store requirements). The way the new content will give way to a cycle of repeating old events also acts as a wind-down period – something far gentler than just switching off the servers – and that feels important for long-term players.

So far, Complete has been a continuation of what I was doing for seven years in the live service game, but with a readjustment period. I don't want to say that I miss the pressure that the freemium systems exerted - it was unhealthy to my brain and wallet. However, using my existing playstyle with Complete's more forgiving cadence creates a looser and less sticky experience. I'm glad I have my save, but I won't be surprised if the game starts to slip out of my routine.

Overall, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete now feels like a closer experience to its console counterparts. There's the familiar roster of cute animals, squillions of items of furniture to craft and place, and you only have to pay once to gain access to the whole kaboodle. At time of writing, Complete costs £9/$10, which is an introductory offer for the first two months of release. That's a great price for the amount of diorama building and tinkering it provides, so the bigger question is how you feel about unlocking the cute furniture and outfits via freemium-style play. If you hate that method, no amount of cute latte art will make it worthwhile.

At the end of January, that price goes up to £18/$20. That's a harder sell, especially in the mobile game ecosystem, but it could still keep the right person entertained. The main thing to note, though, is that after September 2025, there will be no new content, and Complete will enter a similar state to Animal Crossing: New Horizons - perfectly playable as long as the platforms it lives on support it.

Eurogamer sourced its own copy of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete for the purpose of this review.