Animal Crossing: New Horizons is seen in some corners as the most innovative title in the series, with a bundle of new features like expanded interior decorating, being able to fully landscape your island, cooking, and more. It allows for more customization and creative freedom when it comes to making your dream island. But just because a feature was added doesn’t make it necessary, and the crafting system is a prime example of that.
Early in the game, you unlock the DIY feature which allows you to collect crafting cards associated with a certain item. Once you collect enough resources, you can make that item. Depending on what the item is, some resources to make them can be a real pain to collect.
For me to make a trophy case for my house I need 24 pieces of hardwood, 3 gold nuggets, and 6 iron nuggets. The number of trees you have on your island can be scarce, so getting the hardwood can be an arduous task. Visiting the mystery island can be a valid option, but spending 2,000 Nook Miles to get there each time can be costly and inefficient. In terms of the nuggets, it’s up to the RNG gods to determine what type of ore you get from hitting a rock. Sometimes you won’t get any at all. The process has taken me around a day or two in order to build the trophy case. Compared to other series games like New Leaf and Wild World, it's a more obnoxious process to obtain items. Those titles didn't require you to collect resources in order for you to have an item. You could just buy it on the spot.
Some resources only appear during certain seasons. If you want to build a Scorpio Lamp, you would have to have two Scorpius fragments, which you can only get between October 24th – November 22nd. With no way to speed up time unless you change your system clock (breaking immersion), you'll end up waiting months for it. With the game's distinct lack of endgame content, waiting for a certain season or month to re-appear just exacerbates how uneventful things can get.
You’ll have to craft the majority of items rather than paying a visit to Tom Nook. In the older Animal Crossing games, you would go inside either Tom Nook's or the Able Sisters' store and simply purchase the item. Stores still exist in New Horizons, but the amount of items Tom Nook sells has decreased, and you can't purchase anything that already has a DIY card. It takes the enjoyment out of playing as you always feel like you're grinding. Then, once you're ready to craft, you need the resources in your pockets rather than those in your home storage. If you forget a specific item, then you have to run back home and collect it. It delays the process and proves to be annoying, especially if your pockets are already full.
Breaking tools aren't new to New Horizons, but tools do break quite a bit more frequently here, which can really halt your workflow. Depending on what type of tool you have, they can break after being used between 30 to 100 times. If you're out gathering resources for an extended period of time, you might find your tools breaking around every 10 or 15 minutes. In order to make them you need to be by a workbench, select its DIY card, and have all the resources it needs on hand. The process can take up to five minutes each time depending on how far away you are from your crafting table when it breaks. It may be even longer if you don't have everything you need to make it. It also drains your resources, which could be used for other things like furniture, wallpaper, and flooring.
To build certain objects you need to combine two items. For example, to make a Street Piano you need to combine an Upright Piano and a Painting Set. You can't make these items, so you'll just have to hope that the shops have them during one of their 24-hour stock refreshes.
Almost every item is associated with a DIY card. If there’s a certain item you want, you'd have to get lucky by finding its specific card. You find these cards by fishing, shaking trees, through the mail, talking to villagers, or washed up on the beach in a bottle. Once you find them, it's up to you to gather everything you need. I was trying to let my inner virtuoso flow by making a music room, but couldn't finish it since I had to wait for an acoustic guitar and a music stand DIY card to show up (which they never did).
A lot of holiday-themed items are locked behind DIY cards. For example, during the Bunny Day event, you have to collect a variety of eggs to craft items such as furniture and clothes. If you don’t gather enough resources during the event, you’ll have to wait until next year to finish up the DIYs. You have to grind the event rather than enjoy everything it offers. I spent Bunny Day shaking every tree on my island just so I could make an Easter-themed dress for my character and make her look pretty (not that she wasn't already, of course!).
The crafting system is poorly implemented as a whole, and a game that's always been so accessible by design is better off without it. Going back to how the way things used to be would do a lot of good for the series.