It’s the return of Story of Seasons, or for the older folks like me, the return of Harvest Moon. It’s been two years since A Wonderful Life released, and only a couple months since the spin off series Rune Factory released its most recent entry. This time though, it’s time to welcome the Grand Bazaar! Since you can’t simply release the same game time and time again, the titular Bazaar is the main new gimmick of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar and it adds another level to the world building.

Felix rocks the top hat better than Slash!

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is still, thankfully enough, a farming/life sim. The idea is still to grow crops, sell them, and build relationships, both in the shape of friendships and getting married eventually. The main difference being that instead of simply shoving everything you grow into a bin to be sold, you run a stall at the local bazaar! Said bazaar is full of little kiosks, all of which, besides yours, are themed to a specific type of commodity. All while this is happening, you can simply sell anything your heart desires as long as it’s something that you can own.

One of the neat things about the bazaar is there are always seasonal interests. This means you’ll always have specific things you may want to be working towards on your farm. These can be anything from round vegetables, to specific meals that will make you reorganise your crops in order to be able to make them. One of the first ones for me was mayonnaise, which means I actually got extra chickens before I got any other animals for my farm so I could get eggs to make mayo.

The early days, before I could make hundreds of thousands at the bazaar.

So we all understand the main concept of Story of Seasons, and the new way of selling. With the Bazaar, your village actually has a rank associated with it. This will go up based on helping people get their stalls set up, and making enough money running your own stall. So some of those items you considered holding onto, you might just simply sell to push yourself towards increasing your village’s rank and unlocking more stalls, or meeting more people.

On the note of meeting new people, the character designs are adorable, everyone just seems so cute! On top of that, the voice acting is very much fitting for each character. Of everyone that I met, I don’t think there was any voice I particularly thought “hmm, maybe that wasn’t the right choice for this character.” At this point, Maple and June have been my favourite characters to get to know, both have quite differing personalities which is good as well as they seem they should be quite different. 

Only in a game like this will you see someone hopping joyfully when doing menial chores.

As you grow your relationship with characters, you will need to complete tasks for them to unlock the next level of their relationship. Now comes the one key issue I have had with Grand Bazaar mainly because I’m pretty sure I’m doing it right. One of Maple’s relationship favours is to bring her any 10 flowers, but I simply can not actually give her 10 flowers. This means continuing her relationship isn’t possible. I’m not sure if there’s something I’m missing or the game hasn’t explained particularly well, or if this is an actual glitch, but it made me sad to be locked out of the relationship.

Compared to some other recent entries in the series, and especially compared to the spin off Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Grand Bazaar feels really small. This is a remake of a 3DS game that definitely got a graphical overhaul, but possibly could have done away from some of the loading areas like between the village and mountain or the bazaar. This makes every area of the game feel very separate and segregated instead of one cohesive world. It’s just a small complaint, but something to note all the same.

Step right up! Snake oil is 30% off!

Overall, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a successful remake that takes everything the original had to offer, and builds it up to modern standards. While there might be a couple blemishes, it’s nowhere near enough to cast this game to the side. The gameplay loop is perfect for short bursts and long sessions, and hopefully you can build a great relationship with whomever your particular love interest is.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is available now on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 

A copy of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar was provided by the publisher.