YMMV / Virtual Villagers

• Broken Base: While it seems almost impossible, Virtual Villagers suffered a massive broken base when the forums became extremely strict, scattering most (If not all) of the members who had been there since Virtual Villagers: A New Home. The same effect occurred with the games; the older veterans of the series believe the games stopped being charming at Virtual Villagers 4.
  • There was a huge amount of controversy around The New Believers. The "heathens" wore masks and had totems you were supposed to tear down. There is an ongoing storyline that runs through all five games, in which a tragedy caused the original Isolans to forsake their faith. In their old faith, magic and nature were balanced. The newcomers have the same faith, or come to believe in it as they restore the original people's deserted cities and settlements throughout the first four games. So the "conversion" was actually just a return to the old faith. But it looked horrible. No matter what the rationale, converting "heathens" to the "true faith" sounded really disturbing, especially since these "heathens" were the original inhabitants of Isola.
• Funny Moments: Some of the spam emails (such as the below Viagra parody) seen in Virtual Families can give you a chuckle, as they spoof popular real-life spam subjects.
  Spam email: Do you want a bigger brain?!
  Do you want a bigger brain? All the ladies like a guy with a big brain. Try our product free for 60 days. If you are not satisfied with it, we will send you even more of it. Don't let the ladies down!!!!!
• Goddamn Bats: New Believers has a yellow-masked heathen child known as a “Rascal”, who will haphazardly run around your island terrorizing your villagers. While all the other aggressive heathens tend to stay in one place, there’s no way to control this kid. This is especially annoying when you’re picking up relics/mushrooms or trying to do simple tasks since aggressive heathens will promptly interrupt them, and since the power you need in order to convert the yellow masks is the final power in the game, you’re stuck dealing with them for pretty much the entirety of the playthrough. At least you can distract them with butterflies.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Alchemy in Virtual Villagers 3; basically by combining three herbs from the different flowers you find throughout the island, you are able to make a potion that each villager could drink. However, the brewing has a chance for the potion to explode, severely damaging your villagers down to half their health and furthermore, the majority of them serves no gameplay purpose aside from different interactions with the only one that is helpful being to refill the villagers health. To makes things even worse, these potions are also required to complete two of the puzzles (jumping to retrieve one of the key and to neuter the sharks to gain access to food in the oceans) that require you drink a very specific potion combination that is only vaguely hinted by poorly defined patterns that you see on the walls.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: New Believers shows this as it has most of the areas blocked off by enemies called heathens. Clearing them requires the challenge of magics, multi-tasking, and cooperation.
• That One Achievement:
  • Virtual Villagers 3 has two.
    • Child Prodigy, you have to get a villager to master a skill before age 18. That gives you a very low amount of time to master one skill.
    • Jack of All Trades, you have to get a villager to master all five skills. The problem is, you cannot waste any time if you don't want the villager to die of old age before mastering one.
• That One Puzzle
  • A New Home has the treasure, which requires some trial and error to locate, since there's no real indication where the treasure is.
  • Virtual Villagers 3 has the Ash Key, which requires you to wait for the fire to go out. You have to get your villagers to put water on the diamond several times, which they won't do on their own. It's also noticable that the key is never anywhere where you can see it.
  • As mentioned in Scrappy Mechanic, both the Ruby Key and the Shark neutralizing puzzle in Virtual Villagers 3 (especially the latter as it is very critical to gain unlimited food source from the oceans) require that you brew potion from very specific herb types that is only vaguely hinted through patterns that you would know unless you read a walkthrough online how to do it not to mention that even with a max level alchemy, you can still fail and the potion explodes, dealing severe damage to the villagers.

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