It’s...brilliant. In my forties & utterly obsessed with it. Yes, it has parallels with The Sims, but it’s so much more. You can swim, dive, there’s interaction with your villagers, special characters that visit your island & event days, with theming to seasons/holidays etc. Your villagers also celebrate your birthday.
It’s a nice paced, kind of linear progression, starting from when you arrive on your island, building as you develop skills, diy building, onto customisation of your island via terraforming etc with rewards as you progress. And the characters are mostly cute (there are a couple of odd ones!) and adorable. Even the weird looking dudes (Barold, I’m looking at you!) have their own charm.
I play with my adult kids (with their own devices) and friends, visiting islands, meeting up etc.
I’d say, if this is your first Switch console, spend the extra money on a Switch, not a Switch lite. There can be issues with the thumb joysticks developing ‘drift’ which is easy to temporarily fix with cleaning, or replacing the joysticks for about a tenner (kit on Amazon) I’m lucky having an electronics hobby as it’s fiddly to do. With a Switch lite, if you’re unlucky you could end up with an unusable device.
Animal Crossing is brilliant. Chilled fun.