PROS
+ Kid-friendly and cute

+ You're fixing up an resort and decorating cabins for specific visitors!
For fellow Animal Crossing fans, this was a huge improvement to me: I'm encouraged to decorate cabins for specific visitors (different from the Friends who are with you from the beginning). They'll only visit if they have a cabin that suits their tastes, and after visiting a set amount of times they'll ask to move in! It made gathering furniture and crafting stuff have more value than simply hoarding everything you can possible hoard. (Minor downside is that these visitors is on an weekly rotation so you only have a small window to unlock them permanently at a time)

+ Events are casual focused!
You don't need to be worried about having to put aside enough time to do an event and get time-sensitive event furniture and clothes. All the events only take place at the beginner region (which is the smallest one), and ranges from finding 1 item in the region up to 7. (So far). You get enough event currency to buy more than one of each item as well! Previous event (Lantern event) I ended up getting 10+ of a specific table that I wanted (after unlocking everything)

+ NPCs will help you gather materials!
Everyday a set amount of materials spawn, and wanting to be efficient and gathering it all makes sense. However, as the game continues you'll easily find yourself overwhelmed by just the vast amount of things you COULD be doing. Luckily, once you maxes out your friendship with an villager (Hitting Best Friend Status), you can ask them to help gather one material a day each! (Hint - different NPCs hit Best Friend status at different levels, some as early as level 17 - I'd recommend trying to give these as many 3 hearts gifts as possible to unlock this feature as early as possible)

+ No micro transactions?
There is no cash shop! We might see an paid DLC in the future but outside of the digital deluxe upgrade (Which is intended for PC players to easier catch up with the arcade players as the game is actually 2 years old) there is nothing you need to pay to unlock or to make the game easier for yourself. And the game is good enough quality that I personally want to give the developers more money.

+ Over 100+ hours and I still have story missions!
When the game first released, I saw many posts complaining about the price and at the same time saying "It's worth 20$ at best". I disagree. It has got good graphics, it has no micro-transactions, I'm sitting on 100+ hours and I'm still not done with the main story. (I haven't even unlocked all the regions yet!)

CONS
- You might get stuck early if you haven't been giving gifts!
You can give a total of 3 gifts a day to each of your Friends. And, doing so will increase their friendship level. However, quests will unlock at specific levels where the first one is around friendship level 7 (iirc). A lot of people end up being stuck with nothing to do very early in the game because they must level up a friend before they get more quests! The downside here is that the deluxe edition offers items that makes it so you can gift to a villager again that day. (Making people who pay extra have an smoother experience in the first 10 hours)

- NPCs have specific buffs if you choose them as your companion!
You'd think this would be a positive. Some make you swim faster, or run faster, or make critters run away slower. But it easily forces you to stick with a specific singular NPC to follow you around every day rather than the one you personally like the most. Some of this gets fixed later in the game as you get upgrades (like faster swimming, or being able to have two followers). Either way, I'm tired of being stuck with the same person. (and there is no easy way to swap between them. You need to find the NPC on the island and ask them to spend time with you)
(Another negative on this is that if a story quest requires a specific NPC, you cannot have that NPC as a companion. They will say that they're busy. This is especially frustrating with the NPC that helps you get extra free items when crafting.

- Not that many new clothes and furniture a day!
I'm going to admit that I wish there was a way I could refresh the shops (furniture and clothes), as I feel like I'm not getting new furniture as fast as I'd like.
This isn't the biggest of issues, as you can visit other people and buy from their shops. (And the official discord has a dedicated channel where people share their shops). But it definitely feels like a priority to just log in and check the shop every day.

- The story isn't that deep
I am not personally expecting a lot of story from a game that is the similar vein as Animal Crossing, and while Hello Kitty Island Adventure gives you more story than New Horizon did it is still a very thin story and will be a major drawback for some players.

⠀⠀100/10 would recommend

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this game has the potential to be great, but there just isn't enough to do.

the game is designed to be played for a very short amount of time per day, and there's very little to actually do in this time. most of the quests are locked behind friendship levels, which, after like level 6, take forever to build up especially wish me mell like wtf is her problem!!!. you can give the characters 3 of their favourite gift and they'll only gain like 15% of a level, and you can only give them 3 gifts per day (unless you use friendship bouquets to reset that, but they barely help). the quests are also super short, so once you've hopped on, gifted the characters, gathered some resources and done a 2 minute quest, you now have to wait an entire real life day in order to do anything else. there also just aren't enough resources per day to actually gift some of the characters their favourite gifts. looking at u retsuko...

outside of friendship and quests, there are visitor cabins, puzzle rooms and critter catching.
the puzzle rooms are way too short and easy, you could probably solve most of them in a minute or 2, and the rewards you get from them are really hit or miss. sometimes you get a cool piece of furniture, and sometimes you get flour.
the critter catching feels pretty pointless, there's not much incentive to catch and donate critters other than being a completionist, i suppose? but then there's so few critters that you can just catch them all pretty fast anyway.

the visitor cabins require strawberry crates to build, but the crates don't respawn once you've picked them up, and the cost for the cabins gets higher in each new area, meaning that actually unlocking all of the cabins and upgrading them is near impossible. then once you've got your cabins, you have to grind some more for the random decorations that visitors require, and then you have to wait for them to be travelling because they only travel in specific months. oh and then you have to get them to 5 stars of friendship by doing quests for them, which requires them to visit at least 5 times (sometimes more if you're not a high enough level with another character), and if you don't manage to get their friendship up within their travel window, then you have to wait even longer.

i love sanrio and there are plenty of nice things about this game; the graphics, the furniture and clothing, the music, and the frequent events, but it's all really overshadowed by how gated everything is, and it kinda makes you feel a bit punished if you happen to miss a day because now everything will take even longer to unlock. additionally the pc version is missing a bunch of content that's in the apple arcade version and we have no info on if or when any of that is coming to pc.

if you like having a game you have to dedicate a very small amount of time to each day, maybe you'll enjoy this? but if you're looking for a game you can sink hours into, whenever you like, with lots of progression, incentives, things to collect, etc. this sadly isn't it. it's just a fomo-based mobile game that doesn't respect your time in the slightest. sorry kitty, but ur game is bad.