Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Review (Switch 2, Switch, & PC)

After Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Marvelous has decided to shift its focus to Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. All are remakes, with the newest bringing 2008’s Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar to the modern market. The original game was released on the Nintendo DS platform. So, we’re expecting some major changes featured on the next-gen Nintendo Switch 2. 

On the official website, Marvelous promises lots of new and returning features, including voice acting for the first time in the series. Being a remake, though, we can’t get our hopes too high of having our minds blown. Chances are that the new game will remain largely the same as the original. But there’s a chance, a small chance Marvelous might surprise us. 

Anyway, while the original game wasn’t quite everyone’s favorite entry of the Harvest Moon series, does the remake redeem its status among the fresh Story of Seasons entries, and for the foreseeable future? Let’s find out in our Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar review below.

Bird’s Eye View

Listen, leaving your crazy life in the city for a more carefree rural farm life works for the flurry of farming sims today. And Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar pretty much adopts the same premise. You have your old, worn-out plot of land in Zephyr town, and are asked to nurture it till it flourishes and breathes new life into your new home as a whole. On the surface, the remake follows very much the trajectory of the original, at least in concept and things to do. Your life is at your farm, planting, watering, and harvesting crops, and rearing animals. You sell your produce for income to upgrade your tools and expand your reach. And while selling, you’ll meet colorful characters who fill your farm life with beauty and wonder, whether by blooming friendships or married life. 

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is also the same as the original in structuring your sales via the town’s bazaar. When you arrive in Zephyr, the bazaar is abandoned and in desperate need of revival. And that responsibility falls on you, through a consistent supply of produce to meet the demand of your customers. Over time, you’ll attract more customers who encourage other people to set up their own stalls. And you can begin selling and trading among one another, gradually expanding your business and earning more and more income. But lots of things are different from the original. Lots of tiny to major changes that elevate your experience to the next level.

Reaping What You Sow

At first, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar gives you an already built house, barn, and piece of land. And your heart might drop at losing out on decorating your new home. But before you can sit on those pesky feelings, you quickly immerse yourself in the cycle of farming crops and animal husbandry. It’s a pretty neat system running smoothly, where you do nearly everything yourself.

You don’t automate watering and harvesting processes. Rather, sow, water, and harvest crops row by row. Watering needs a twice-in-a-day routine to reap the best harvest. Animals, meanwhile, require regular feeding, brushing, and even petting to grow closer to them. It can all get a little too consuming, in a good way.

However, when your farm expands and animals multiply, it’s good to see Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar implement a system that helps you manage tasks. For instance, you can have your pets take out your cows to graze, and bring them back at sundown. Or you can use your bell to gather your animals to the barn. Meanwhile, sowing, watering, and harvesting are quicker, thanks to your character jumping up, in a pretty funny way, and covering multiple grids at once. This will, however, require upgrading your tools, water can, and all, to cover a larger area of effect. And in that sense, you do feel a sense of progression.

A Little Progress Each Day

Day by day, you’re making steady progress. And on every Saturday, you get your time at the bazaar. This essentially means every week you’re planning ahead, farming the produce you’d like to sell in time for bazaar day. You’ll access windmills, which help you process raw products into items like cheese and mayonnaise.

And then, you can bundle up everything you want to sell and transport them to your stall in town. The selling mechanic is pretty fun, with a bell to ring whenever you want to attract customers to your stall. The customers may want something else that isn’t displayed on your front table, meaning you constantly have to shift things around. 

And the money you’ll make selling items in high demand, damn, it’s pretty good money. And it’ll help you buy the items and upgrades you need from other stalls before the close of the day. You’ll want to prioritize items like extra storage, allowing you to stock up as much produce as you can. 

Glide Away

I mentioned one of the wind’s uses as renewable energy for your windmill production. However, it serves an even more valuable purpose in boosting your glider through the air. That way, you can soar the skies and reach destinations quicker, pretty handy given the multiple times you’ll be moving from your farm to the bazaar to the windmill, and so on. Wind is a pretty big thing in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, and even affects your crops, where you may have to shield them from strong winds. 

Of course, the winds won’t always steer you in the direction you want to go, and so the jumping mechanic also comes in handy when jumping over buildings and scaling rooftops. Overall, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar improves on a lot, not just in a smoother and fluid performance, but also in adding vital features to a more enjoyable playthrough. 

Story Time

As for the story, though, I’m afraid it might be the weakest link here. It’s rather simple and straightforward. And the characters you meet don’t necessarily help flesh out the story more. They may send you on quests, sure, to help them with one errand or the other. And in return, you’ll boost your friendship levels. However, most of the time you’ll be running past them, simply pressing the handy button to say hi to boost your friendship. No time to chat, I’m afraid, when there’s nothing interesting you’d be telling me. It’s not all characters, though, with a few pretty fun to befriend and even romance. 

With the voice acting, I have to say, storytelling is so much better. It makes conversations more engaging and immersive. And accompanied by the beautiful graphic revamp, that’s the jackpot right there. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar looks so charming and wonderful, you can easily get lost in the carefreeness of Zephyr, even when you have a million things to complete on your to-do list. It makes the errands and “busy work” not seem like bothersome activities to chase and complete. 

In Closing

There’s so much more to awe over, way more than the minor frustrations you may encounter. From the major changes like watering multiple grids at once and via a funny jumping-up mechanic to tiny ones like gifting the nature Sprites to upgrade your weeds, ores, and gems, everything comes together in a splendid and beautiful way. 

Some mechanics, though, can give you minor frustrations. Your limited storage space, for instance, definitely needs upgrading. But even then, storing higher-quality weeds, ores, and gems takes up more space. You often need to prioritize your produce and items to make more profit at the bazaar, but at the expense of some valuables taking up more space than they need to.

Fishing, as well, is too slow, and frankly, not all that interesting. Lastly, the bazaar may begin to feel over significant than other features. It nets the most income, and that can tempt you into investing most of your time. Meanwhile, there’s so much more you can do in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, including aforementioned fishing, catching bugs, and fraternizing with the townpeople.

Verdict

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is definitely on a whole new level compared to the original game it’s based on. Even compared to other entries in the series or other farming sims, it ranks highly on aspects of visual fidelity, engagement, and overall entertainment. Despite having so much to do, it never feels overwhelming or taxing. It otherwise feels relaxing, and a perfect way to desensitize from the hustle and bustle of life.

And the bazaar system is by far the best, often challenging you with a myriad ways to progress and make your stall bigger and better. There’s always another staircase you can reach based on the items you choose to sell and upgrades you invest in. And that incremental pace and fulfilment that comes from hitting milestones will keep you invested for hours, weeks, and even months on end.