After hitting an important milestone in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players gain access to ordinances, which can be enacted in order to make some overarching changes to an island. While the effects associated with these ordinances are intended to be positive, there is one that can lead to negative results. More specifically, Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Beautiful Island ordinance can be a recipe for disaster, and it may need a rework if it is to appear in the series' next entry.
For the uninitiated, the Beautiful Island ordinance in ACNH has several effects, the majority of which are, essentially, strictly beneficial. Those beneficial effects include a reduction in the appearance of weeds, the elimination of cockroaches, and the removal of the trash that can be caught while fishing, and it is hard for them to go wrong. The ordinance's impact on flowers is another story, though, as an island can become completely overrun with blossoms if a player is not careful.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a stellar addition to Nintendo's life-sim franchise, and players should consider restarting their islands in 2025.
Flowers & Animal Crossing: New Horizon's Beautiful Island Ordinance
To put things simply, the Beautiful Island ordinance significantly increases the chance of a flower's reproduction, even when it is left untended. This effect can undoubtedly be useful when trying to breed hybrid flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but it can also lead to a flower explosion that has the potential to consume the entirety of an island. While it is true that players can use several methods to prevent that from occurring, such as placing custom paths on tiles where flowers are unwanted, things can quickly get out of control if there is any lapse in diligence.
This phenomenon can be seen in a variety of social media posts, where players bemoan having ever enacted the Beautiful Island ordinance. Indeed, while some players might be happy to live amidst a carpet of flowers, the ordinance's tendency toward an overabundance of blossoms can be upsetting to ACNH fans who have spent a significant amount of time carefully cleaning and designing their islands. Some players even suggest that they have been compelled to completely start over after an island under the Beautiful Island ordinance became overtaken with flowers; a clear indication that the ordinance can lead to some very undesirable results.
Dealing with Flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
It is important to take a moment to acknowledge that flowers are not permanent fixtures, and an island that has succumbed to an ordinance-inspired flower explosion can be fixed. However, completely deflowering an island can be an extremely tedious endeavor, as each plant must be dug up individually. This tedium is exacerbated by the fact that tools break in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and players will go through many shovels as they attempt to return their islands to a pre-ordinance state.
If a player is going to attempt to clear an island of flowers, they may want to do so on a day when they have good belongings luck. Indeed, tools have infinite durability on those days, making it much easier to dig up an abundance of flowers. Fans can confirm the state of their luck by visiting Katarina in ACNH, a fortune-telling panther who will set up shop on Harv's island.
It is also worth noting that ordinances can be changed, allowing players who want to rescind the Beautiful Island ordinance to do exactly that. However, it is likely that the ordinance's damage is already done by the time that a fan realizes that they should abandon it, making this option not particularly useful to fans who are facing a flower-covered island.
The Beautiful Island Ordinance in the Next Animal Crossing
If the Beautiful Island ordinance does return in the next Animal Crossing game, which will presumably release for the Nintendo Switch 2, a variety of changes to its flower-focused effects could prevent it from causing undesirable growth patterns. For example, the ordinance could specifically target rare hybrids, making it easier for players to grow those sought-after flowers. Regardless of the specific implementation, it seems reasonable to say that the ordinance was not perfectly realized in ACNH, and some alteration is needed for the series' next entry.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 90 /100 Critics Rec: 99%
- Released
- March 20, 2020
- ESRB
- Everyone / Comic Mischief, Mild Fantasy Violence, Users Interact, In-Game Purchases
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo EPD
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
- Engine
- Havok
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer
- Expansions
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Happy Home Paradise
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
