This game is totally addictive- I thought it looked pretty stupid when I saw commercials for it but it is a blast to play. HOWEVER, that being said, if you purchase this game be sure to do a good deal of research before beginning. There are a lot of things that you will not be made aware of until you are already well into the game and it feels like it is too late to start it over as you have built up an inventory, developed friendships with your neighbors, and paid off your house.
First of all, there are several different town layouts. I did not know this and just took the first one offered to me. Apparently if you are not happy with this layout you can keep restarting until you get one you like, and there are some really nice town layouts out there, one that I especially wish I had gotten with two rivers and an island that seems much bigger than my town.
Secondly, this is something that you are not really told in the instructions or in the manual-- DO NOT RUN AROUND your town!! Doing so will wear your grass down until it is gone and you have large patches of brown dirt everywhere. Some people's towns are practically desert wastelands. This is not just an aesthetic issue- it affects game play, as you need grass in order to catch certain bugs, to plant trees and flowers, and during the winter the snow 'is' the grass so where there is no grass there will be no snow. You need snow in order to make snowmen, for which you recieve snowman furniture that cannot be obtained any other way- it is not for sale, it can only be gotten by making the perfect snowman. If you have no snow, you cannot do this. And apparently making the snowman also kills the grass. This is a feature that was built into the game called "animal tracks." It is supposed to work where after a couple of months the areas where your character is always walking, such as to Nook's store or the museum or post office will eventually show trails. However, if you run, or if you log on multiple times a day, say to play different characters (which the game is designed to do- you have 4 houses and 4 potential characters and when families are playing they have to take turns logging on, yet the grass only regenerates a certain amount each day at 6 am, but each time you log on you counts as a day that you are putting wear and tear on your grass- therefore, your grass regrowth will be 3-5 times slower than its regeneration) and once it has been worn down you will see small dots where it is growing back but unfortunately one step on that 'square' and you will see that tiny bit of regrowth literally disappear under your feet. Nintendo's answer to this is to plant trees and flowers in those areas as that is supposed to make the grass grow faster. The problem is, to plant them, and then in order to water the flowers and pick the weeds and harvest the fruit, you still have to step on the area and there goes your regrowth and you are back to square one. It is unfortunate that the game has this built in and that they made the grass growth so much slower than its degeneration, especially when playing multiple players or when playing via wifi and having people come to your town. The wifi option also causes the grass to degenerate more quickly. I don't know why they would have it that way when the game was advertised as being pretty much for the wifi experience. I think possibly it might not be so much of an issue if you know about this from the start and are very careful with your grass. Unfortunately I had the game for 2 months, have been playing 2 characters and running around my town like hooligans before I realized that my grass was disappearing. There have been buttloads of complaints to Nintendo but they do not have any plans to try to fix the problem at this time. I have heard there are other ways to fix it, such as 'hacking' into your wii which can ruin your wii and void your warranty so I don't recommend it, or time traveling, in which you log in, log out and travel forward to the next day (using your Wii clock and calendar, not the game clock and calendar) and logging in and out, and rinse and repeat. However you will find that you have significant weed growth, turnip prices will plummet, and your neighbors will move. So far I am not willing to do this as I have a few neighbors I have grown quite fond of, one in particular (my town grump).
Anyway, aside from this issue it is really a fantastic game- when fishing you can actually feel the fish nibble and bite your line in the remote- its unreal! Hopefully Nintendo will eventually respond to this complaint with a patch or a release of a newer version of the game, but I am not holding my breath, as so far they seem to feel that the people who are complaining have already bought the game so they have no real motivation to fix it- at least that is what I feel from the responses they have given to people. They seem to insinuate it is your own fault by logging in more than once a day or playing via wifi and having people visit your town, even though that is how the game is designed to be played. That does not seem very cool to me. Again, its not just that it is an aesthetic issue but it does affect game play. And its kind of depressing having to feel paranoid about saving your grass- when animals ask you to play hide and go seek you don't want to run for fear of causing further damage, and it kinda sucks the fun out of it.
Anyway, I wanted to just make sure I put that out there so that other people who have yet to buy the game know in advance and can take measures to avoid losing too much grass by keeping to paths (some people even put down pathways although I have not figured out how they do this yet).
You can always rent the game and play it for a few weeks to see what you think- just be sure to take screen shots at the beginning and then when you are ready to return the game to see how much difference there is. The problem is that its hard to really notice until there has been significant loss. It wasn't until I went into the bug section of the museum and was marveling at how lush the grass was in there that I noticed how NOT lush it was in my town anymore!
Aside from this issue, its an extremely fun game. It would be more fun if you could make more than one town, or could play more than one character at a time without each person having to have their own Wii station (such as with the Sims, where you can plug in up to 4 remotes and play 4 characters at once). But I could live with that if they would fix the grass issue. Heck, I would even gladly buy a new game if it came out with that issue resolved without complaint.
Oh, one other thing when you are starting out-- you have 4 houses and be SURE to check each one out before you make your decision and tell Nook you will take it. You CAN say no and check out the other houses and do not pay any attention to what the interior looks like as you will be changing all of that anyway. The location is the most important thing. And I would say you probably want to be near the beach or a bridge and nearby the major places such as Nook's store, the museum, and post office to minimize the traveling your character has to do to get where he/she needs to go. Once you have picked a house you cannot change it- its permanent unless you restart the game.