Grand Bazaar (Nintendo Switch 2)

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the next STORY OF SEASONS game would be a remake of Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar because I view it as one of the more obscure in the series. When I saw it announced in a Nintendo Direct, I knew I wanted to review it if possible since I had played the DS game. Taking the nostalgia goggles off, it is a mostly great game with a few nitpicks here and there. However, I can confidently say that if you have played it before, you will love the quality-of-life updates Grand Bazaar has made on the Nintendo Switch versions. 

One change I really like is the addition of the glider. The world of Zephyr Town already lets you jump around behind buildings and on roofs with surprisingly few invisible barriers, so having a glider you can catch breezes in to ride across the town is an extra fun way to travel. But I do tend to get carried away, faceplanting into rivers. I often find myself being rescued by the Nature sprites, losing stamina, and accidentally depleting it enough to pass out. Another positive change is the addition of a stall that you can invite to join the bazaar, allowing you to rehome any pets, whereas in the DS title, I was stuck with so many pets because there’s no way to get rid of them once you buy one. That’s partly why I fell out of playing the DS game, since I felt bad neglecting my immortal pets.

Speaking of the titular Bazaar, your main goal, unlike other games in the series, is to breathe new life into the town’s bazaar by going up in ranks. Your life in this game will mostly consist of running around doing various activities to gain materials, crops, and livestock products to sell at your stall at the end of the week. You can decorate your stall to get certain buffs and, once you sell enough, you fill up a bar at the top of the screen that will allow you to invite one or more of the Nature Sprites to do a Lightning Round type of selling before the time runs out. I find the mechanics mildly frustrating since to go to the slot and put an item on your table for sale, you must move there and position yourself. I wish it would snap you to the slot instead, because during the rush of selling things, I kept missing where the slot was to sell to a waiting customer. You get a certain timespan to sell in the morning and the afternoon, so being lightly inconvenienced by one of the game’s main points irritates me sometimes.

Let’s talk more about the characters. I like that you can choose to have a character’s sprite art by their dialogue box instead of just seeing the in-game model. But the sprites have also been given a blinking animation that I find unnecessary and a bit distracting. (Especially when the 3D model blinks as well.) I like that voice acting gets included for full scenes and some dialogue, including the ability to change the voice language to English or Japanese. I like the voice acting in the Japanese dub more than the English one. But my favorite voice actor for the English dub would be the one for Gabriel, previously Angelo, in the DS game. He gives an endearing, “adorkable” delivery that reminds me of Tom Holland’s acting for Spider-Man/ Peter Parker.

And since we’re on the topic of love interests, there are twelve! On top of the original ten, STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar adds two more. There’s Arata, a dense but kind man who trains in the mountains, and Diana, a workaholic and agent sent by the Bazaar Review Board to assess Zephyr Town’s bazaar.

I’ve already mentioned Gabriel, the town artist, but other than him, I have a soft spot for the brothers Jules (previously Ivan) and Darek (previously Dirk), and their struggle with opposing personalities and basically raising each other with their parents gone. I honestly didn’t recognize Daisy, now Maple, with her redesign looking more bland and less unique than before; was this done to make her look more mature? I wish the bachelorettes had more distinct personalities compared to the bachelors; like Maple and Sophie (previously Sherry) are quite similar to each other in both personality and voice acting. On a more positive note, with twenty save slots, you can marry each bachelorette with eight more slots to spare, which is a massive improvement over the original’s two!

To add something about the gifting mechanic is my wish for more specifics about characters’ lists of likes and dislikes. An example of this would be when I gave one of the twin girls, Sylvia (previously Cindy), a Magic Blue Flower, and she disliked it, despite her profile listing one of her two liked things being ‘Blue’. I think items should be specifically listed in their profiles, or maybe a system to keep track of what items each character liked and disliked as you learn more about them, like what Stardew Valley does with its characters. Later, in the Fall, I gave Sylvia a Magic Red Flower that she liked, which makes sense to me since she wears red, so I think this is a legit error and she’s supposed to like the color ‘Red’ instead.

There are also references to other games in the franchise, with cameos and plots of books Jules recounts reading, which I found cute. There are a lot of notable references to Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness. Is this a tease for a STORY OF SEASONS: Island of Happiness or, maybe, Sunshine Islands? And I would be remiss as a Sonic fan if I didn’t mention that when you eat food to regain stamina, the bar filling up sounds like Sonic drowning.

Overall, STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar is a faithful remake with great music and fun gameplay. This Nintendo Switch 2 Edition addresses stuttering seen on the original Switch when things are too busy on screen, and the framerate improvements make the game run much better and smoother. It’s like going from a DVD to Blu-ray, albeit at $10 more, as it’s priced at $59.99 on Switch 2. I’d still recommend this game (on either platform) to all STORY OF SEASONS fans, and highly recommend it to fans of Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar, as it is a well-done remake that carries the spirit of the original.