Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is Beautiful and Unexpectedly Compelling: Hands-On

When I sat down at XSEED Games/Marvelous’ PAX East booth to check out Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, I had the honor of having the game’s Localization Translator, Robin Griffin, give me a guided tour. She asked me if I was familiar with Story of Seasons, and foolishly and optimistically, I said I was, more or less.

As it turned out, I was more less than more more, giving me a sentence my word processor and editor will hate, but works if you read it out loud. Mostly. I played and fell in love with the first two Harvest Moon games on the SNES and N64, but since then have appreciated the series — now known as Story of Seasons — from afar, despite my adoration of Stardew Valley. Put simply, this demo showed me what I’ve been missing.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a complete remake of 2008’s Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar. While this new version’s overall intent is the same, tasking your farmer with growing, gathering, and creating goods to sell at the town’s bazaar, the presentation could not be more different. Go figure that there would be a hardware difference between the Nintendo DS and Switch/Switch 2! While the original is cute in that classic Harvest Moon style, the new game is beautiful, more than I realized from screenshots or video footage. The anime-styled characters are animated and personable (and there are so many of them!), while the town and surrounding areas are so full of life thanks to a lively color palette, detailed and animated environments, and an overall sense of whimsy that’s hard to put into words.

I typically don’t discuss the movement and exploration in farm sims, since it’s often pretty straightforward. In Stardew, I love zipping around on the horse, especially if I — and my farmer — are hopped up on espresso. It gets me around quickly, but is a simple two-dimensional affair. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, on the other hand, has a jump button. A jump! Of course, this means you can hop up on things, but it goes beyond that. Zephyr Town has several trampoline-like barrels to spring up to high areas as shortcuts, and you also have a glider. Wind is essential in this game (there’s even a wind direction indicator in your UI), and leaping up and gliding with the wind lets you get around very quickly.

This would be standard fare in most 3D adventure or action games, but this kind of freedom of movement and exploration was as much of a revelation to me as giving Link the ability to jump and glide in Breath of the Wild. It just isn’t what I expect in my farming games. Beyond making exploration more fun and engaging, though, it even aids in farming. You can use tools while jumping to get different effects, such as extending the range of the watering can when used mid-air, or performing a Mario-style ground pound to harvest several crops at once. It may sound silly that I’m going on about jumping and movement so much, but I’ve played enough farming games to appreciate how different this one feels with these abilities.

Since the PAX East demo was set up mainly to showcase exploration and the bazaar itself, amusingly enough, I didn’t spend a great deal of time on the farm! But I liked what I saw, like how you can quickly jump to your barn and other facilities from inside your house. I tinkered with one of the windmills a bit, which allow you to set up processing in assembly line fashion to create goods. I saw many storage containers on the farm and across town, and was positively delighted to hear they all link to your main storage at home and are something you can upgrade for larger capacity. That’s the kind of quality-of-life thing I love in a game like this… or in an MMORPG where I hoard too many crafting materials “just in case.” But we don’t need to talk about that here!

Instead, let’s talk more about Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar’s gameplay and world. During my demo time, I met several townsfolk, and they are all so lively, engaging, and well-written. Mayor Felix is especially boisterous and fun. I met several “friend only” townsfolk, some of the many romance options, some tourists, and even a handful of the adorable sprites. It was enough to make me interested in meeting everyone else in Zephyr Town.

The last thing I did during my time was explore the bazaar area. Given that it’s in the game’s title, it’s safe to say this is a vital component of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar! Many townsfolk run stalls to sell whatever kind of goods they specialize in, and I met a few who talked about wanting to start their own, but they needed my help getting started. Thankfully, my farmer had a stall ready, so I got to look at some of the many customization options for the tent and tables, and arrange my items to sell how I wanted. I wasn’t shy about ringing my bell to signal my shop was open and to attract customers, and sold through all of my stock quickly! There was only one lost sale, as I didn’t make it over to a little girl who wanted to buy something before she lost interest and wandered off. But all in all, it was a good crash course in how the system works and the importance of quick service and a diverse lineup. Much like the freedom of exploration, being directly involved in — and selling directly to — villagers and tourists makes the “selling stuff” aspect of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar much more engaging than many similar games.

Besides mentioning that I adopted a big, adorable, and very round black calf that I named after one of my best friends, you’re now caught up on my time with Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. As you can see, it was a wholly positive experience. I’m impressed at the apparent scale of the game and its abundance of characters, crops, and animals, the engaging bazaar aspect, and its overall presentation and feel. And I still spent only a small amount of time with it.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is coming to Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and Windows via Steam on August 27th, 2025. Learn more at the game’s official website, and check back with RPGFan for more coverage leading up to release!