1) Have $25 to waste, but not $35, I should buy it?
It's a good buy for any price, I recommend it.
2) If I have about -most- of a full weekend (excluding saturday nights and half of Sunday..) to play it, how far do you think I'll get?
You'll do OK, but you'll do much better if you can devote about 20 minutes every day to doing the minimum of things to do.
3) Is it anything like the Sims? I mean.. how is the money management?
Money is vital, but not important. There's no food to buy, and really you don't have to buy anything. But you'll have to be satisfied with a tiny house and only the furniture that people will give you, so that's no fun. You are in debt for home improvement for a significant portion of the game, but there's no deadline for payment. However, you cannot get a larger house or better town store without paying your debt.
4) How much do you get to interact with the other.... animals? 😮dd: .. 🙄 Wow. animals. That's a new one. :nerd:
Interaction is pretty good. The animals wander around the map on a schedule of their own, and each animal has a different personality. You can speak with each citizen of your town, and you can offer to do favors (deliveries and such) for them. Occasionally, holidays come around and there are different ways the animals participate in them.
5) How big is the world? Can you buy land? If so, how much does it cost?
Your first house costs you 19,800 bells, if I remember correctly. You start with either 500 or 1,000, I'm not sure. There are four user houses that you or your friends can buy, so a maximum of four humans can live in each town. Sharing a town can bite, though, because if your friend plays before you and takes all of the day's goodies, you are out of luck. It's better to have your own town. You can take a train to another person's town (1 town per memory card), so with a lot of friends the world can be infinite. The world is small enough that you can visit every square in less than 5 minutes, but exploration is not a big part of this game, interaction and collection are the focus.
6) What kind of monetary system is used in the game, anyway?
Bells are the currency. You get bells by running errands and selling the fruit and items you can find in your town and other people's towns. There is a town store that carries different items every day, and different numbers of items as you get wealthier. At first bells are scarce, but once you know what you are doing, you'll rake it in. I can make 20,000 to 30,000 per 5 minutes on good days. Playing the stalk market has netted me over 500,000 bells in one day before. You'll learn how to make money.
7) How do you interact with other people? Can you interact with other players? (At this point though, I think not.)
Other players can either live in your town or in other towns. You can visit other towns. You can store items in a special place and put them up for sale when people visit your town. You cannot steal items from within a person's house, but anything outside a house is fair game. If you give an item to Tom Nook, the storekeeper, and tell him the name of a friend's town, he will give you a password. When your friend enters the password at his store, he will get the item. You can even trade these passwords over the internet! 😊
All in all, it's an incredible game. If you play it long enough, you will see the game get brighter as the sun rises and darker as the sun sets. You will celebrate holidays with your townsfolk. I think you'll love it.