The best in the series, but does it live up to the hype?
I'll start with the controls. The controls are perfect, and even if you've not played the game in a couple of months it's easy enough to remember the controls. The game really is fun to play, and it's quite amazing that Nintendo managed to produce a game as addictive as this when it's about nothing! You might not play for an hour a day, but I guarantee that you'll keep on coming back to it, maybe 10 minutes a day. You won't be able to resist coming back!
You'll begin the game with an interrogation by a cat called Rover, on a bus where you are going to your new town. When you get there, you can talk to everyone and choose which house (out of three) you'd like. There are no differences between the houses apart from a couple of objects. You'll then be asked by the shop-keeper to do some small errands for him to help you pay back his rip-off mortgage! After you've paid that off, you'll get a slightly bigger house and another mortgage. And then bigger, and another mortgage. These mortgages are kinda rip-offs. Some of the NPC's will also ask you to run some errands for them, and you'll always get something for doing them. Otherwise, you can collect things like fossils, bugs and fish (oh, and paintings) and give them to the museum, or sell them. You can also go the city, which is the key addition to this game over the DS version of the game. There's some fun stuff in the city, but most of your time will definitely be spent in your village. You can get an invite so a secret shop there, the man sells paintings which you can sell for a profit or give to the museum. But beware, some are counterfeits and will be worth nothing!
The game is one of the best looking on the Wii. It's kind of a cutesy little storybook town, but it suits the game well, even if you are, well, 20 years older than what seems to be the intended age range! The sound gets repetitive, and quick. Turn it off and put your own music on, otherwise you'll be getting angry, and quick.
I've probably played this game for about 30-40 hours, and I'm still not bored of it. It will consume your life, and make sure you lose all your friends and family! You'll carry on coming back to it, coming back to pay that mortgage, find a new fossil, hook a fish, and so on.
Overall, I would only get this game if it was cheap. There are no glitches as far as I've seen, and I'd be happy to pay £25 for this, but no more than that unless it was bundled with the Wii Speak accessory. Don't bother renting either. You should get this or not, and leave it like that.