STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar is a game I’ve been dying to get my hands on. Ever since they announced this during a Nintendo Direct, I thought it looked extremely adorable. I haven’t been this excited for a Marvelous game in a long time. I don’t know what it was about the promotional footage this time, but I had to get my hands on this one. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to get to play the preview build of the game, which includes the whole first month, Spring of Year 1. This newest version of Grand Bazaar is somewhat of a remake of the original Nintendo DS game, except Marvelous USA specifically states it’s merely inspired by the old Grand Bazaar title and that this new release actually contains a lot more content than before. Perhaps that’s part of why I was so excited for this game. This is the first one of the recent Bokujō Monogatari remakes that I actually have nostalgia for. I blindly bought the game for DS back in the day, I believe not long after it had come out.
When you start the game, you see this brief scene where you pick up a flyer advertising Zephyr Town. It’s assumed that you’re either already a farmer, or decide you want to move there and become a farmer. Before you move to Zephyr Town, you’re able to create your character. There are a decent variety of options. You can choose one of two outfits, pick from a small selection of voices for your character and also select your hairstyle, face, skin color, etc. Once you’re finished with creating your character, you show up in Zephyr Town and are greeted by Mayor Felix during the latest bazaar event. This is where you get an introduction to how the bazaar works and get to try out selling stock to customers for the first time.
The way the mechanics function when you’re running your bazaar I found a little bit clunky. You pretty much slide your character back and forth across this counter to line up with spots on top of it, where you’ll place items for sale and sell stuff to customers when they show up. It was kind of hard to quickly slide to and line up perfectly with each space, although I could see this being intentional to make the bazaar more of a challenging minigame type of thing and not as simple as it was in the DS title. As you get further in the game, you can earn, as well as purchase from other sellers at the bazaar, various decorations to improve your bazaar stall. Some of these different options will give you extra profit for specific item types, such as cooked dishes, or crops from your farm. The bazaar is a weekly event and each time it ends, the money you’ve earned contributes to upgrading the overall event and Zephyr Town’s reputation. Sometimes new characters will visit Zephyr Town and give you quests to unlock their stall at the bazaar, other times existing characters will as well. When you sell stuff at your own stall, you’ll have a morning session, then a short break to go purchase whatever you want from other characters, and afterwards in the afternoon you can finish selling off your weekly stock.
Speaking of quests, I’d like to talk a bit about that next. This new game is full of quests and new story bits to enjoy. I love how much more personality there is to the game. I feel like you learn a lot more about every character than you may have known from the previous version’s minimal story. I will say, however, your first week in Zephyr Town is a bit hectic. Every day of that first week, Mayor Felix seems to have something new to give you or teach you, as well some of the other townspeople. You might find yourself a bit stressed out trying to keep up with quests, in addition to greeting characters in town, getting started on farming and foraging for goods. It pays off to stick it out though. I definitely recommend spending your profits those first couple bazaars on various important features. I ended up saving up, I believe to get extra storage for my house and bag first, as well as a couple of different animals and some other important stuff, like the ability to double jump. My point is, there’s no reason to sit on too much money this first month. I found myself wanting everything one would need to make their new life as a farmer much smoother.
Not only is this new release packed with charm when learning more about each character in Zephyr Town than before, but the atmosphere is fantastic as well. I was a little worried at first that Grand Bazaar might feel as cheap as I thought Guardians of Azuma did, as far as the art style and graphics are concerned. I was afraid maybe it just looked better in trailers than it actually does when you experience it for yourself. In the end, I had nothing to worry about. There is some minor clipping, such as if you choose a longer hairstyle, or like when your character lays down to go to bed, I saw their hat clips through the pillow a bit. But the amount of clipping in Grand Bazaar is so minor in comparison to how it was in Guardians of Azuma. For example, I can’t walk through characters or my animals this time. Also, I didn’t run into any major performance issues. The only thing I noticed was during a couple story scenes when the camera pans, it was a smidge choppy, but that was about it. Oh and I guess I should mention that I am once again playing on an OG Switch. Not only is the amount of clipping very minor, but also, the art style is full of so much more shading and life. This new game looks just as cute and charming as any of the DS or 3DS Bokujō Monogatari games did. To be honest, I think this could possibly be the best STORY OF SEASONS title on the Switch. Keep in mind though, I’ve only played through one fictional month thus far. But so far, I am quite pleased and I don’t think any fans of the series will regret picking this one up. I think this was a fantastic entry for Marvelous to remake and I’m happy to see how much more charm they injected into it.
Overall, I’m adoring this new take on Grand Bazaar. Before I got my hands on the preview, it was something so cute I wanted squeeze it just from watching the trailers. I truly cannot wait to get further, experience the changing seasons and see what happens next. I also am anxiously waiting for Samir to come to town. One disappointment I’ve had is that the new bachelor, Arata, is a bit of a training obsessed muscle head, much like Murasame in Guardians of Azuma. I’m kind of tired of the older, more mature looking bachelor options being given personalities like this. But other than that, my only worries going forward are whether or not things stay fun for the whole year, every season in the game. I’m curious to find out what new events each season contains and if the game feels like something I’ll regularly want to pick back up after many more hours put into it. I’ve put 15 hours into it so far, just in Year 1 Spring. Once again, if you’re a fan of STORY OF SEASONS or similar farming games in general, I definitely think you’ll want to keep an eye out for this one.
STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar launches for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam this upcoming August 27th, 2025.
Preview build provided by the publisher.
