During the Nintendo DS era, there were a plethora of games that were released in Japan and the West. Examples include Harvest Moon DS, Harvest Moon DS: Sunshine Islands, Harvest Moon DS: A Tale of Two Towns, and Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar. All of those titles are remembered fondly by many fans for one reason or another, even if some were a bit more divisive than others.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a game that aims to deliver the experience of Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar in a new, modern format. This is a title that has been highly anticipated, especially from the many trailers that the publisher has released over the last couple of months. But does this game hold up to its DS counterpart? Or should you just not bother with it?
There Once Was a Bazaar
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar begins its story with you, the player. After grabbing a flyer posted to a bulletin board, you learn about how a quaint little town is looking for a new farmer to tend to the farm there. Looking for a way to escape the hectic city hustle, you pack your bags and immediately leap at the chance to start your brand-new life.
There, you meet the mayor of Zephyr Town, Felix. This town, adorned with its beautiful windmills, was once known for its bustling bazaar, attracting many visitors from both near and far to browse the various wares they had on display. Unfortunately, after the last farmer had left, the bazaar has long since fallen into decay, and now it feels like a shadow of its former self.
However, Felix is confident that you have the power to help change all of this and bring back the bazaar to its full glory once more. This is a story that has a pretty simple premise, and honestly, it’s par for the course when it comes to the games of the series. Personally, I really enjoyed this premise because it’s simple enough to understand while also giving the player a nice goal to work toward.
Come on, Come All!
True to its namesake, this game is all about the Bazaar. Every Saturday, you can set up your own stall and sell your items to any potential customers who are walking around the area. There are two shifts to the Bazaar: The first is the morning shift from 10 AM to 1 PM, and the second is the afternoon shift, which is from 3 PM to 7 PM. You can also use the downtime in between your shifts to visit everyone else’s shops around the Bazaar, with some items being only sold during this specific period.
Now, this is practically the only good way of making money in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, because your farm is not equipped with a Shipping Bin. While it is possible for you to sell certain items to the general shop in town outside the Bazaar days, it’s not exactly recommended to do so. While early on, there isn’t a significant change in the amount of money you get, selling items at the Bazaar will increase your Bazaar Rank, which is the main objective of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. Therefore, it is much better if you wait until the next Bazaar day to sell all those items.
Furthermore, every month, the mayor will send you a list of the market’s trending items. These will net a slightly higher price when sold and will also be more likely to catch customers’ attention. This creates a nice cycle of strategizing in the game, especially as you upgrade your stall to be able to sell more items. I tell you, I was literally brainstorming all sorts of calculations, eagerly waiting for the next in-game Saturday to make it big at the bazaar.
Something I noticed is that these market trends are different each time. For personal reasons, I had to restart my own save file because I wanted to change my farm name and my birthday, and on save file 1, the trending items were ores and fish. These got changed to perfumes and green-colored recipes on save file 2. This means that each player’s playthrough will never be the same, making it unique for every player.
Love is In the Air
Of course, there’s more to Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar than the farming aspect. Zephyr Town is home to all sorts of unique faces for you to interact with, and once per day, you can give out gifts and talk to them. As you do, you’ll steadily grow your bond with them, and this will trigger special cutscenes where you start to know more about that character in particular. An important aspect of this is the requests that will be given to you.
Upon reaching a certain threshold, a lock is placed on the heart indicator, preventing your bond from increasing any further. From here, two things can happen: One is that they must either complete the request they give you, where you must give them the items they desire, such as food, crops, or specific tasks. But two: a lock may be placed until you increase your bond with someone else, usually one who’s closely connected to that character.
By doing so, you can continue to increase their bond, as well as obtain a staggering amount of points toward your relationship. For instance, I have barely even talked to Lloyd, but after I’ve done his tutorial quest to give him some pieces of ore, my relationship with him immediately climbed to the next tier. There are also certain foods that, once you’ve consumed them, provide you with a small buff that will make you slightly closer to a given person.
Unlike its DS counterpart, this remake allows you to romance whoever your heart desires, regardless of their gender. This is a trend that has been happening for a while, and I’m glad that Marvelous is continuing with it. Personally, I went with Gabriel, the town’s artist, because of his personality and character design. It was love at first sight. Although I do feel they could’ve done something better for the indicator.
You see, regardless of whether the character you’re speaking to can be romanced or not, they’re both depicted with a heart that sits to the left of their name. The only difference is that the villagers have a fixed color, whereas romantic partners have a heart that changes as your bond progresses with them.
It would’ve been nice if the villagers had a slightly different icon, so the player can quickly glance at it and go, “Oh, I can’t romance this person. Okay.” It is admittedly a minor gripe, but one that is worth noting, since I can see people getting very frustrated when finding this out, similar to when it was found out you couldn’t romance Tsubame in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma.
Elements That Make a Huge Difference
I’ve already said this during my preview, but it bears repeating once again. For the first time ever in the series’ history, Marvelous decided to invest in the game’s voice acting. Several cutscenes feature full voiceover in both English and Japanese, unlike the partial one we’ve been having with the series thus far. And the voiceover is so good, I think I actually shed a tear in one of the cutscenes.
The amount of immersion the voice acting adds to the experience is something that cannot be overstated. Every single event had me immersed from beginning to end, and I loved each one of them. This is the kind of thing that I have high hopes that Marvelous continues to do in the future. Not just that, but we’ve also had the glorious 2D portrait sprites return in full form, alongside the vastly improved 3D models.
Compared to their DS counterparts, a good majority of characters’ names had some alterations made to them. For instance, on the DS, June was called Antoinette, whereas Gabriel went by Angelo. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaarby this. You see, after XSEED took over the series’ localization, they elected to simply call these characters by different names from the original translation. This was allegedly done for copyright reasons, but I must admit that I could not find any specifics, even after combing through their old Localization Blogs from back in the day.
Still, I don’t have any particular issue with their choice of names. Perhaps the only thing that slightly bothered me was the performance. When I sat down to record some footage of the game, I had my Nintendo Switch 2 docked, which meant the game needed to be outputting in 4K. And I definitely noticed some hitches and stutters. However, as soon as I switched back to handheld mode, these slight performance hiccups disappeared almost completely.
In fact, the game also seems to be completely optimized around the fact that you’ll mostly play this in handheld mode, rather than docked. The text boxes have a legible font that is quite big and easy to make out from a distance. You also have the option to play the entire game with Japanese text, with support for furigana characters to help you read the kanji of the characters’ dialogue.
What I Wanted From the Series, And Even More
To me, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is much more than just a simple remaster of a Nintendo DS game. It checks all the boxes of what I wanted from the series and even adds in extra details, such as the full voice acting. The presentation and style are completely different from the DS, and it manages to bring out what I can only describe as the best Story of Seasons experience I’ve ever had so far.
I had a lot of fun with the game, spending hours upon hours. Honestly, if future remakes of other Story of Seasons games are just as well as this one, it just makes me even more excited to see what they’ve got planned for the next big mainline game. But for now, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is, and pardon the overused word, a must-play title for both newbies and veterans.
Disclaimer: Marvelous provided Final Weapon with a Nintendo Switch 2 review code of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar for review purposes.
