STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar Review

Welcome to the charming town of Zephyr, a quaint community filled with friendly residents and gentle music, but they have a problem: its once-thriving bazaar isn't doing so well. That’s where you come in. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, the latest instalment in the long-running franchise, has you taking on the role of a young farmer who has been tasked with revitalising Zephyr’s Saturday market. With a heartwarming story, a cosy visual aesthetic, and gameplay that blends farming, fast-paced sales, and community-building, this game delivers a feel-good experience that’s easy to get lost in for hours on end… and I'm not joking, there is so much to do here!

The game opens with a cinematic shot of Zephyr’s town square and a mysterious figure pulling a flyer from a bulletin board. This is your character, who is about to start a new life as its newest resident. You then get to create your farmer, choosing from a variety of options like name, pronouns, birthday, and farm name. There's also a voice selection, although it's mostly for expressive grunts and reactions — your character never actually talks in the game.

This feels like a very chill, relaxing title, but there is actually a lot of pressure on our new farmer. The town’s mayor, Felix, is so over-the-top that he is convinced that you are the farmer who can bring the Grand Bazaar back to its former glory, even though you are new to it. He volunteers to teach you everything you need to know about farming, selling, and life in Zephyr. Once you start learning how things work, he will give you your first booth at the market and provide a few items to sell just to get you started, since you won’t have anything of your own to sell yet. Felix also has his own stall where you can pay to learn other useful techniques!

The bazaar is the heart of the game and what you are constantly focusing on. You need to spend a lot of time tending to your crops and making sure you have a variety of items to sell. Unlike other farming games where you place your harvested items into a bin and it takes care of itself, Grand Bazaar puts you in the role of an actual salesperson. Every Saturday, you set up your stall, choose which items to display from your inventory, and prepare for a full day of interacting with customers and managing stock.

Market hours run from 11:00 a.m. to 1:59 p.m., after which you have an hour-long break, which is nice if you need to run back to your place to restock your bag, and then reopen from 3:00 p.m. to 6:59 p.m. Time flies, especially when you’ve spent your morning feeding your chickens, watering crops, and scrambling to gather other goods to sell. If you show up late to your booth, you simply lose out on selling time. There's no harsh penalty, but when you're trying to increase your sales, you will want that extra time.

Selling isn’t just standing and waiting; it is very interactive. If you are playing on the Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2, you’ll use the ZR button to ring a bell to get customers’ attention, but timing is key. Ring it too early or too late, and they’ll walk on by. When they approach your stall, you’ll need to serve them quickly and replace sold-out items on your display with fresh stock. Or if a customer has an item in mind that isn’t on display, you can quickly swap your stock to have the product they want. It’s surprisingly fun and adds a real sense of urgency and satisfaction to market days.

Our main goal in the game is to raise the bazaar’s rank. Once it improves, new types of stalls will appear along with new customers and events. The different kinds of booths are also nice for you, as they give you new items to purchase, like animals, clothing, and decorations for your own booth. With the variety of items to purchase, the overall sales for the bazaar will increase, improving the rank of the market.

While the bazaar is the main draw, farming is your primary source of products to sell. After your first night in Zephyr, Felix shows up with all the farming tools you need to give you a crash course in how to use them. With your hoe and watering can in hand, you’ll till the land, plant seeds, and nurture your crops. Fertiliser can be used once per day to improve quality, and better quality crops mean you will make more money when you sell them at the bazaar. Be sure to water every single day, except for when it’s raining, or your plants will dry out and wither.

Crop selection is seasonal, so you’ll need to plan carefully. There are four seasons in the game, each lasting for only 31 days. Plant the seeds in the wrong season and you’ll end up wasting time and stamina. Jumping while using tools like the watering can allows you to cover more ground, which is a great quality-of-life feature. And speaking of stamina, keeping an eye on your meter is important; don’t ignore it. If you exhaust yourself by staying up past 5:00 a.m., you’ll pass out and lose an entire day, which really sucks when you have so much to do!

Eventually, Felix gives you your first chicken, and that’s when animal care begins. This was one of my favourite parts: chickens can be fed, petted, and even carried around to build your relationship with them. I love my little Clucky; she lays an egg every day that I can sell or use to make recipes. Use your barn bell to herd the animals, and make sure to let them graze for a mood boost. This will be useful once you get a barn full of different animals. You’ll also gain access to tools you need for your herd, like brushes, shears, and milking machines to keep them happy, as well as gathering things like milk and wool.

There’s a surprising amount to do in Grand Bazaar. Outside of farming and selling, you can fish, mine, build, cook, craft, explore town, and participate in community events. The calendar on your wall lets you track festivals, birthdays, and special competitions like the Pet Show, Horse Derby, and Crop Festival. Winning earns you trophies, titles, and bragging rights — you even have a shelf on your wall for these accolades.

Wandering around the town, you will find the townsfolk going about their daily routines, sweeping, painting, working at the cafe, and reading on the bench. Interacting with these people builds relationships and can even lead to something more; they all have their own unique personalities, not just clones. You can view resident info from your inventory, track friendship levels, and even receive requests for specific items. If you help the residents and complete the tasks they ask of you, they reward you with new tools, gifts, and increase your relationships with them, making it worth your time to help out.

You can also customise your little farmhouse and store your extra items in the storage room attached to your home. Your radio offers three stations, Musical Melodies, Weather Forecast, and Veggie Vengers, which is a fun radio show that’s entertaining to listen to. There’s even a vase for flowers (though they do wilt after a few days) and a calendar where you can check out events for the next two years, plus you can see the birthdays for all the residents, so you can visit with them and give them a little gift if you so desire.

As you progress, your kitchen unlocks, allowing you to cook and bake dishes from recipes you have learned or discovered on your own. Recipes can be found in random places, like on a bookshelf, or learned by eating the dish yourself when you purchase it at the cafe. Besides learning the recipe, eating dishes not only restores stamina but may grant temporary effects like better crop watering or rare item boosts. Some of the dishes can be customised with special ingredients to improve their quality and increase their selling value.
Don’t forget to bathe! A bath takes 30 in-game minutes and can only be done once per day, but it’s a fast way to recover stamina for when your character is worn out from working so hard. And if you’re feeling social, visit the cafe for a hot drink or meal, just be sure to have room in your inventory or you won’t be able to purchase anything. I found that I would spend a lot more time in the coffee shop when it was rainy out, and I didn’t need to spend time watering all my crops.

Relationships with your fellow villagers and animals are more important than you may realise. Giving gifts (especially on events like Honey Day), learning residents’ likes and dislikes, and eventually, you might even experience special connections with a few people. There’s also the potential for animal breeding once you have a healthy animal who is old enough, but you need to get permission first. The game lets you have only one pregnant animal per barn, so you might need to do some planning if you were hoping to have multiple animal babies. Besides being super cute, owning animals will give you things like milk, eggs, and wool that you can use for cooking, making products, or for selling at the bazaar.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar has a whimsical, cheerful aesthetic that feels relaxing and rewarding to be a part of. The music is light and playful, the visuals are vibrant and welcoming, and the overall pace of the game is perfect for when you are feeling stressed. There is something relaxing about harvesting vegetables, picking flowers, or sprinting across town to make it to the bazaar in time, everything feels rewarding and satisfying; it is so addictive!

It’s also one of the few games where you genuinely feel appreciated by the NPCs that you interact with. The townspeople are warm and expressive, always thankful when you help them out or for helping out the town with the bazaar. It’s easy to get connected to these characters and the town itself. It truly feels like you’re part of the growing community.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is an excellent addition to the series that doesn’t feel like it’s the same old game again. There is so much content in this cosy title to do, I was never bored; instead, I felt like I didn’t have enough time to do everything that I had wanted. Between farming, taking care of the animals, cooking, fishing, socialising with the other residents, and running your stall, you are always busy. This is the kind of game where you lose track of time, and before long, hours have passed.

Whether you’re a longtime fan of the Story of Seasons or Harvest Moon series, this is a game you need to play. If you are new to the series and jumping in for the first time, this is a wholesome, feel-good game that is a pleasure to play. When it launches on the 27th of August, do yourself a favor, set up your booth, ring that bell, and help Zephyr and its residents to make the bazaar thrive once again; it’s an incredibly rewarding experience!