Don’t Stall in picking this one up
There is nothing more nostalgic than revisiting an old game that you have put in hundreds of hours into. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a remake or reimagining of the original game Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar on the Nintendo DS and follows the story of a farmer that arrives in Zephyr Town in order revive its once bustling town. The Bazaar of Zephyr Town was once the most famous in the world, featuring visitors from all over but had fallen into despair due to tragedy. It is a game that I have put many hours into on the Nintendo DS and I could not wait to get back into its remake on Switch under its guise Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar starts off quite similar to its DS counterpart but not completely. You arrive as an unnamed protagonist whom you can customise from their gender to their clothes and name, and soon you converse with Felix the mayor of Zephyr who wishes for you to partake in the Bazaar and restore the town to its former glory. From the get go you can feel instantly how much the game has had an upgrade. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar looks incredible, with the Switch 2 now out and the game having released on that also the game looks incredible on the original Switch which I am playing on and the performance too is also fantastic. Character models have seen a significant upgrade and every detail even down to shadows is great. When characters converse you would see their portrait and while you still can you are able to turn this off but you don’t have to, character interactions are also more visual with characters having full facial expressions; because of this a lot of the games dialogue has changed but in a good way and many cuteness have either changed or certain dialogue has been removed altogether that works with the characters voice acting.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar features a relatively simple gameplay loop similar to other games in the series where you will be farming, looking after your animal, collecting produce and foraging out in the wild for flowers, wood stone and bugs all of which can be used to either sell directly, process or upgrade your farm. However the main attraction to Story of Seasons: Grand Baazar is in the name, the Bazaar itself, this is a weekly event that takes place every Saturday and you will get to sell your hard earned goods at a weekly stall within the town. Selling at the Bazaar is a simple but addictive mini game which requires you to move from side to side among the stalls that you have currently and sell your goods to the current townsfolk by ringing a bell and attracting their attention, they will buy your items which you can then restock with other items. This will require a large portion of the day but is by far the most lucrative way to sell your items, by doing this you will unlock decorations for your market and upgrades which will enhance your selling power. Doing so will also attract new vendors who may also be interested in selling within the Bazaar and by attracting more vendors will allow you more options for buying within the market, whether this be animals or upgrades for your farm. It is an addictive gameplay loop and once you get into it, it really makes Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar a joy to play. Another thing is your now able to mine resources for stone and ore and if you never played the original DS version of the game this was a pain as you were never able to do this. To get this resource you either needed to wait until winter to collect them or purchase them during the bazaar but again this was not always a guarantee that you would be able to, this is a much needed upgrade in the Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar remake. The festivals have also seen one of the biggest upgrades with interactive events and improved interactions as the original game was very bare in comparison.
What really sets it apart from its DS counterpart though is the character interactions, with 12 potential relationship partners the game offers plenty of choice and there are still many other villagers that you can also befriend, each character has their own cutscenes also which also appears to be fully voice acted. As the name of the town suggests Zephyr is a town of wind and is a hidden mechanic in some ways but actually is a core mechanic in helping you move around the map, the wind has a massive effect on your glider and this will become important, moving around town requires you to normally avoid rivers as you will lose stamina when you fall in them but the glider will allow you to traverse them with much more ease, the wind also has an effect on the windmill which determines how quickly produce is turned into better produce like Milk into Cheese. Another quality of life feature is that there are storage boxes in other areas apart from your farm so you will be able to store items elsewhere when your bags get full, which happens more often than not. If I had to fault Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar on somethings it would be that there is not enough challenge or any real consequences in the game, and while I love most of the character designs I feel some of the more eccentric characters like Raul are missing that uniqueness however these are minor and I still love what they did in improving the game to its original.
Marvelous themselves states that Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is not a remake but rather a new interpretation of the original game and it shows, a lot of the cutscenes have changed and the game really feels like it has had a new lease of life. All of the small interactions from townsfolk and graphical upgrades and details when it comes to farming and quality of life features really improve the game massively. While you can definitely see the core structure of the original Harvest Moon game and I will always have that soft spot for its charm, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar definitely has a lot of added weight to build the bare bones DS game into something much bigger and stands well on its own as a fantastic remake.
A Nintendo Switch Code was provided by Marvelous Europe. This article is featured on OpenCritic
