Oh wow, this update is more than I hoped for! Like Mimi I am most excited about the free update, with its farming and its pro-photographer mode and all the little furniture additions - yum! Hopefully they'll sneak in new villager dialogue as well, which I feel is needed. Nice to see Brewster but as I haven't really played previous editions it doesn't strike quite a big a chord. I really like the look of the quality of life improvements as well. Shortcuts to storage and bells, ladders for cliffs, more incline / bridge slots and the ability to squeeze past furniture! The marketplace island also looks cute.
There's enough here for me to start properly tinkering with my island again. I think the orchard is going to be drastically cut down to make room for changes, and myabe some of the wildnerness I've carefully cultivated is going to go too. Sigh, I really could do with a second island or a larger one. It would have been lovely if they'd added a feature to expand your existing island - perhaps terraform out another two dozen squares with some new shoreline and beaches. A second island slot with the expansion would have been most welcome.
Speaking of which... wow, the expansion looks pretty neat! I like the notion of being a straw-boater wearing Lyle Langley hustling vacationing rubes with the hollow promise of a vacation of a life-time, though I'm sure in reality I'll be a devoted facilitator of their idlest whim. Partition walls and columns with the ability to resize looks neat, and craftily only unlocked for your village if you buy the expansion. Still this will allow us free reign to really go to town with our design aesthetic impulses, and it's kind of cool that it'll allow you to do so with your villager's huts as well.
So it looks like I'll once again be Animal Crossing's utter slave for the next couple of months at least post release, so expect to see a lot of me. Also with the garden expansion I can make a proper one now instead of relying on beachball water melons that the fiendish Dr. Wu covets so.
I'm so happy a little Animal Crossing joy has brightened your day, Mimi! Can't wait to check out what you and Darwin create!
Also @Kovacs, yikes, that sounds a stressful day. Glad to hear all is well though. Hugs.