Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar acts as somewhat of a remake of Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar (2008) on Nintendo DS, though it’s a far enough departure that Marvelous is describing it as “inspired by” instead. This is one of many of the Story of Seasons farming simulators, with Grand Bazaar focusing on selling your crops and other goods at a weekly Bazaar.
If you’ve somehow never come across this long-running series, Story of Seasons (formerly known as Harvest Moon) which started back in 1996 is one of the earliest in the ‘cozy games’ genre, acting as an inspiration for titles like Stardew Valley. It includes a mix of growing crops, taking care of animals, getting to know the locals, and some light dating sim mechanics. Grand Bazaar is perhaps a little more goal-oriented than some of these, but it’s a fairly laid-back experience.
There’s a Plot Here, Somewhere…
Our nameable protagonist sees an advert and decides to take up farming in Zephyr Town, a place famous for its breezes and formerly for its weekly bazaar. The mayor wants your help to restore the bazaar, asking you to set up a stall every week to sell your wares. It’s implied that you’re new at both farming and selling, so it sounds like he has pretty high expectations for a newbie.
The main goal in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is to rank up the bazaar by meeting sales goals and achieving various quests to unlock new stalls. As time goes on and goals are achieved, new residents arrive in the village, and a fairly minimal plot is revealed through cutscenes involving what happened to the farmer before you and how the bazaar declined from its former glory.
Each resident has their own questline too, which will unlock as you rank up your relationship with them through speaking to them, handing out gifts, and miscellaneous events. These are mostly silly events, like how certain characters are terrible cooks or have concerns around family and work, where you speak with them and sometimes try to help. There are also some additional scenes between residents not involving the protagonist. Some of these are pretty amusing, like seeing one of the love interests out of her depth while doling out romance advice to the kids.
These work well enough to give you a motivation to restore the bazaar and get to know the residents, but they’re not particularly interesting for the most part, unlike the series spin-off title Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. That said, it’s more than some farming simulators, and what I’m really here for is the gameplay.
Crops and Windmills
If you’ve played a Story of Seasons game before or one inspired by it, you won’t find many surprises in the basics. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar features growing crops, taking care of a variety of animals, and exploring the local town and the nearby mountains to gather additional resources daily. All paired with stamina and storage management, along with an engaging gameplay loop to upgrade tools, expand the farm, and improve other mechanics to help your farm reach higher heights.
After growing crops and foraging for other materials, you can process many of them in the town’s three windmills, at least after unlocking them. The amount of time this takes varies based on the item itself and how strong the wind is that day, though you can also use another boost in the late-game.
This all links together nicely. The only aspects I had any real issues with were how small the storage is and how item stacking works. I found that storage was pushed to the limit, and I had to get rid of items I didn’t want to on occasion, at least until I was about twenty hours in and had expanded it multiple times. This was largely due to every different quality of item counting as a different stack, so instead of collecting four eggs in one stack, it could take up to four separate item slots. This was an issue with the windmill processing too, which also has limited slots. Beyond that, keeping rarer items long-term was only really viable later on in the game.
As well as the titular mechanic and way to move the story forward, the bazaar works as a weekly clean-out. It’s a pretty fun event where you need to speedily put items on display, reach customers asking for them before they get bored, and switch out items if someone is asking for something else. You can even build up a meter to get a cheer section going for some bonus money and ring a bell to attract people’s attention.
Like many other aspects of the game, your bazaar stall is upgradable. This automatically includes adding more benches to display items, which makes it really hectic on occasion.
Life in Zephyr Town
There’s a lot to do in Zephyr Town. I spent much of my time farming, foraging, and occasionally fishing, typically followed by greeting many of the residents to improve friendship levels. But one of the most interesting features is events.
The pace of gameplay in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is particularly good in some ways, with the weekly bazaar and character events breaking up daily life. Fairly frequent events added to this.
Some of these were about judging your progress so far, like submitting a crop to the Crops Show, then raising the quality limit if you win. Others involved quick-time events or other types of minigames in addition, like the Pet Show. There were also ones where you need to gift people items, such as Hearth Day where you share hot meals and get them in return, which works well to learn new recipes. It felt like there was always an event coming up soon.
One of the main downsides I find with farming simulators is the time when there’s nothing to aim for. With events on top of the main goal for this game, this acts as a huge attraction, stopping it from becoming tedious over time and keeping me playing for hours on end.
It helps that there are quite a few end-game goals to aim for, many of which are slightly hidden away. There are powerful items to find, which will push you toward earning your fortune. With that said, I did think it was a slightly unusual choice to lock away a certain effective automation tool until near the end, where many people will be finishing their playthrough.
Love is in the Air (Kind Of)
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar has 6 female and 6 male romanceable characters, and you can marry any of them. On that topic, you can be referred to as male, female, or non-binary, and wear both male and female-oriented clothing, with the ability to switch clothes at any time.
Sadly, none of the romance options really caught my attention, unlike some of the previous titles. It never feels like there’s much depth to any of the residents, and while some of them fall into anime archetypes I might enjoy (like Maple the enthusiastic but clumsy maid), I just didn’t have much interest as they weren’t particularly comical or endearing.
It didn’t help that romance is locked behind not just getting to know the romantic interest, but also others around her. As well as that, any potential hints of romance are locked far down the path of friendship.
Locked is a keyword here too, as unlocking the next relationship levels for residents sometimes requires fulfilling quests. These can be reasonably straightforward, or they can be absolute pains where you need out-of-season ingredients at high quality. This can then lock progress if you don’t have the means to get these. While goals to aim for are good, losing out on the slow daily progress and any bonuses for participating in events in the long term did get frustrating.
Remake Woes
On the whole, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar feels like an excellent remake. However, I will take the time to highlight one minor issue and one major one.
One of the mechanics of Grand Bazaar is using the wind to glide around. It’s a fun way to zip around, as long as you’re going from left to right. It’s also used to access certain areas to gather items. This can be paired with jumping on barrels, which spring you up into the air.
The controls to activate the glider however, particularly after using a barrel, feel a little imprecise. This has led to me either not activating it or activating it too late and falling into the water (losing stamina) a number of times. Controls are a little imprecise generally too, with lining up next to the intended customer at the bazaar also occasionally being an issue. I mostly got used to it, or at least used to recovering from it, but even over fifty hours in, I was still occasionally falling in the water.
The bigger issue is around performance. Keeping in mind, I’m playing the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, primarily in docked mode. It’s normally okay, but the performance drops significantly rather frequently, to the point that it feels like everything is running slowly.
Luckily, this is a farming simulator with no combat, so for the most part, this doesn’t affect gameplay. But it’s certainly very noticeable, even to someone like myself who isn’t particularly sensitive to framerate and such things. It’s a pity that this is happening on the Switch 2, when this is why many moved away from its predecessor console.
Beautiful Bazaar
Outside of performance, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar looks great, if with sometimes strongly stylized characters, as you’ll immediately see from the mayor, who looks like he lives in the gym and doesn’t know what an inside voice is. Zephyr Town looks nice and is particularly scenic during winter. There are quite a few effects adding to this, like snow or leaves flying through the air.
I played with the English voices, but Japanese is an option too. Some scenes are fully voiced, but most are just partially voiced with a word or two, which often gets repeated. The mayor has an over-the-top, cheesy style of voice acting, which fits his character well. The other are more typical of an anime dub. Much like the story that features them, it’s nothing special, but it works well enough.
Verdict
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar works well as a farming simulator with more structure and events than many others, which works to its advantage. Certain elements are weak, including the dating and the performance (at least on Switch 2), but it has an excellent gameplay loop, which makes up for a lot.
STORY OF SEASONS: GRAND BAZAAR IS RECOMMENDED
Hints and Tips Guide: Click Here
If you’re looking for something to play on the Nintendo Switch 2, check out our review of Donkey Kong Bananza.
Many thanks go to Marvelous Games for a Nintendo Switch 2 review code for Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
