Review – Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar

There’s no shortage of choices when it comes to farming sims. Whether you’re after cozy vibes and the slower pace, get a thrill out of managing your homestead efficiently, or find the idea of starting a new life that appealing, the genre is a staple for a reason. Story of Seasons sits comfortably in that space ever since it first tilled the soil back in 1996. 

For Switch players, there are now six SoS titles to choose from. If you’ve been on top of those releases, you’ll know that half of them are remakes, including Grand Bazaar. Originally a 2008 DS title, it built itself around a weekly marketplace and some microphone-based wind gimmicks. The latter has been removed, but the former is alive and well as the centerpiece of your new life. 

How it stacks up to those other options is somewhat irrelevant. The series’ framework is present and accounted for. What’s distinct is its cast of characters and the aforementioned marketplace, and over time both of them grew on me in different ways. It has a bit of a slow start (though it does a good job of rolling out something new nearly every day when you first get going) and can gatekeep you for bits of time if you’re not adept at planning, but Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a great example of the genre and a welcome addition to the Nintendo Switch 2 library.  

 

 

The setup for Grand Bazaar is nothing spectacular — you’re moving into a town as its new farmer, giving you a chance to establish yourself in the community. What sets this SoS apart is that Zephyr Town lives and dies by its weekly marketplace. It takes a farmer to revitalize the bazaar, and with the previous one having left under unclear circumstances it’s on you to fill their shoes at the behest of Mayor Felix. 

I appreciated this as a narrative thread, even if it’s nothing groundbreaking. While the overall environment remains status outside of the changing seasons, a recurring element of the game is recruiting new shopkeeps and citizens to open up bazaar stalls of their own. Doing this and generating strong profits will let the bazaar grow in notoriety and inventory, creating the core loop throughout your first year or so depending on your playstyle. 

That’s the overall storyline you’re guaranteed to encounter, but modern Story of Seasons games carry themselves proudly on the shoulders of romance and relationship building. The twelve bachelors and bachelorettes of Zephyr Town are all likable in their own ways. Looking for someone cool and worldly? Meet Lloyd. Enjoy unwinding at the local cafe? Maybe Freya’s the one for you. Each potential partner has their own charms and personal storylines to dive into via cutscenes that’ll pop-up as you get closer to everyone. 

 

 

After getting to know everyone, I felt most drawn to June, who looks at a glance like an aloof rich girl. Over the seasons I learned about her fondness for clothing design, her relationship with parents that live apart from each other, a hidden talent for baking, and plenty more charming interludes. I appreciated that I could take on this aspect of the game at my own pace, and that Story of Seasons continues its openness to gender and marriage. That’s to say you can wear whatever you want and wed whoever you want.

Unlike your potential spouses, the various other townies are more muted in their personalities. Some are defined by their professions (such as handyman or waitress) while others are more identifiable by their family (a pair of twin girls), and others still are just kind of… there. I appreciated some having sidequests tied to them to get a bit more personality, and there are relationship trackers for non-marriage candidates, but they ultimately feel extraneous and less developed. 

Of course, relationships are just one part of the equation. The thing that drew me into Grand Bazaar more than anything was the development of my farm. There’s an inherent joy to running your home and business as efficiently as possible. What starts as a single field of crops, a humble kitchen, and a chicken coop will eventually blossom into something much bigger. These games have an uncanny ability to make you excited about gaining livestock and that’s alive and well here. 

 

 

Every element of your homestead has parameters that can be improved across various means. Taking the time to pet your animals will make them happier, making byproducts like milk and wool higher quality. Soil can be improved over time, letting you fetch a higher price at market. When you build up enough storage, suddenly you’ll find yourself with a larder full of ingredients to cook better recipes for stamina recovery as you put in a day’s work. Grand Bazaar makes the most of these hooks, with potential to become your newest and cutest addiction.

All that toil isn’t just on the farm. I found myself running laps around town to mine ore to turn as high a profit as I could thanks to a seasonal trend at the market. That, along with other forgeables like lumber and flowers (and fishing, there’s always fishing), will give you plenty more materials to flip. Raw ones won’t do much for you — it takes Zephyr Town’s signature windmills to make the most of those. 

 

 

See, the town has three windmills each with their own list of processed goods that you can make. Doing so takes time, with the windmills’ rate depending on the day’s weather. Windy days will speed up the process, giving you some opportunities to up the rate of production. At first you can make things like yogurt or simple jewelry, but in time you can set into a routine of refining crops back into seeds, or upgrading your tools to make day to day farm work quicker. It’s some of these processed goods that will fetch the highest prices around, incentivizing you to manage your windmills in tandem with your farm. 

You do deserve breaks though, and thankfully one of the improvements to Grand Bazaar over its DSD original is a greater number of festivals throughout the year. These are great for upping your standing with the townsfolk and gathering up rewards, including improvements to specific crops or livestock byproducts. And of course, none of what I’ve described is omnipresent — Story of Seasons is your pastoral life, live it as you like.

My chief complaints with Grand Bazaar are right there in the name. Despite developing the market being a narrative hook and motivating factor for gameplay, that comes with one core caveat. The bazaar is only held one day a week, every Saturday. Put another way, that means anything related to the bazaar is locked out six days of the week.

 

 

The most frustrating of these are farm and storage upgrades. Being unable to buy new livestock can be annoying, particularly if you’re eyeing certain varieties and they don’t show up that week. More often than not you’ll find your in-home storage and pockets full late into the week, but unable to bolster your storage space until a couple days later. Did I mention selling midweek at the general store is minimal returns compared to turning a bigger profit at the bazaar? The impact of this gets lessened as you do reach those permanent upgrades, but it unnecessarily condenses and gatekeeps portions of the game that other series entries don’t limit nearly as much. 

Whatever character the bazaar brings is diminished by those limitations. It creates some situations where you come up just a little short to grab something you reeeeeeally don’t want to wait a whole week for. Likewise it can lock certain characters up for a day or two, getting in the way of more relationship-oriented endeavors. It feels weird to knock a game for its signature element, and in a lot of ways I do love the titular Grand Bazaar; I’d just like some access for its vital services, even if some kind of diminished capacity. 

Still, if my biggest complaints are that and some occasional annoyances with inventory management, you’ve got yourself a strong example of a farming sim. Story of Seasons might not have the kind of depth and multiplayer you can find in Stardew Valley or a license behind it like hobbits or Hello Kitty, but it really does know how to present a charming escape from your own day to day. Once you find a rhythm it’s easy to lose yourself in the changing days, with genuine joy springing forth at the little things. 

 

 

40 hours in and I’m nearing the end of my first full year in Zephyr Town. Playing on Switch 2 was a smooth experience, albeit for a simple (and I say that with naught but affection) game. Still, the bright colors and cutesy style pop well on the system’s screen. I can’t speak to the Switch version’s appearance and performance, but playing handheld in some way is easily the best way to dive into these games. Going into a second year promises more opportunities to grow bonds, bovines, and bountiful harvests; not to mention a family. 

I recommend this one for anyone looking to while away the in-game days with plenty to nurture and improve over time. I’m nowhere near “complete,” but I don’t think that’s the way to think about this one. I find myself looking back on massive returns on investments in a given week, or my horse winning the summer derby, or getting to know all these likable characters one-on-one and as a community. Story of Season: Grand Bazaar brings out the best in the genre, and even if you didn’t play the original or aren’t a longtime player it makes for a pleasant piece of peaceful escapism.

 

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