Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar – One of the Best of All Time
I never had the chance to play Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar when it was available on the Nintendo DS. What I heard, though, was that it was a fantastic game that broke from the Harvest Moon template in a variety of unique and interesting ways. Playing it on the Nintendo Switch 2 now, under the Story of Seasons branding, and I can see why.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a fabulous farming experience that really is doing a lot of things differently. I could talk at length about the game’s day-to-day mechanics but most of you are going to be familiar with that at this point. It’s still a Story of Seasons game, so obviously you will be tending animals, growing crops, foraging for items, and participating in various festivals and events. But it’s what the game does differently that gets me excited, so let’s talk about a few of my favorite things.
Weather: This isn’t the first Story of Seasons game to have dynamic weather that will impact your day-to-day farming, but for me the idea of crops getting destroyed is pretty interesting. Combatting this is pretty easy – simply put up some wind screens around your crops. It does, however, force you to pay a lot more attention to the weather day-in and day-out, which is something I don’t tend to do when I play farming games. You are forced to do it here, and I really like that!
Harvest Sprites: Harvest Sprites are an age-old tradition in Harvest Moon and Story of Season games, so I knew they would be here. In most of these games, the Sprites will help you with chores around the farm, but in Grand Bazaar you’ll gift them specific items to increase the quality of those items. There is a fishing sprite, a foraging sprite, a honey sprite, and more. Give them the items they want, and all future catches/forages/etc. Of that type of item will have better quality. This creates a really interesting decision space: do you bring the items you foraged to the bazaar to make some money, or do you increase the rank of those items?
Grand Bazaar: The namesake of the game – the bazaar is the life blood of Zephyr Town, and you’ll be trekking over to the bazaar each and every week to sell your wares. There are no shipping boxes on your farm, and while you can take your items to the local shops to sell during the week, it’s always more fun to stockpile them for Saturday! Once again, it’s a nice way to propel you forward to make the most of each and every day. Sunday – Friday I spend each and every waking moment making sure I have stock for the bazaar. As I’ve played more of the game, I have skipped a bazaar or two to complete quests or do some cooking, but making sure I have a good amount of stock for bazaar day is a great way to quickly put months and years behind you!
There are a multitude of other reasons to purchase Grand Bazaar now that it is available, but these were just a few of my favorite ways the game is taking a different approach. As I stated previously, we never played Grand Bazaar when it was on the Nintendo DS, so this feels like a brand new experience to me. While it might not be my favorite Story of Seasons game to date – those Doraemon Story of Season’s games really get me – it is easily a better game than Pioneers of Olive Town, and one worth investing in!
Article By Adam Roffel
