I was lucky enough to have gotten my hands on the remake of Harvest Moon Grand Bazaar, now known as Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. I was able to play the game on my Nintendo Switch 2. It was also the actual version for the Nintendo Switch 2. This one includes a mouse mode! I think all this support for the mouse mode in Nintendo Switch 2 is awesome!
Zephyr Town
You are a new farmer called to Zephyr Town. You have a huge burden on your shoulders as a new farmer, which is to rejuvenate the Grand Bazaar. Zephyr Town’s Grand Bazaar was world-renowned at one point, but after the main farmer who kept the Bazaar afloat left the village, it crumbled. The Mayor, Felix, provides a lot of support as he helps you move into your new farm and gives you some equipment. Felix also tries to hold the Grand Bazaar every Saturday and asks you to focus your farm on having enough supply to sell at a stall.
The gameplay loop is now revealed as you can use a hoe to till your farm and a watering can to water it. You have to till the soil in the open space on your farm and plant the seed before you can water it. Then you can use fertilizer to improve the quality of the plants, fruits, and vegetables. In the next few days, you will receive visitors to the farm who will give you utensils. These utensils will help you cut the grass, break rocks and logs, and even catch fish. By the end of the first week, and you do the next Grand Bazaar, that is when the next section of the game becomes more important. The social aspect.
Being Friends With The Village
In Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, your bonds with the people in Zephyr Town are important. Every time you talk to a person in town for the first time that day, you increase your relationship with them. You can tell based on the heart next to their picture when you talk to them. You can also look at their bonds on the menu, which will help you see where you are with befriending the people who live in Zephyr Town.
There are times when you have to wait until a scene plays out with them or after handling a request for a person before their heart can be full to get to the next heart. The scenes are generally fully voiced cutscenes, which is very nice! The requests they ask can be finding or it can be processing an item at the mill. Once you get the mill fixed in the town, you can put resources you gather to be processed into actual items. They can be processing ore and metals into accessories, wooden splinters into lumbar, rock pieces into stones, or even flowers into dyes or perfumes. It’s important to process what you can, as that can also help with upgrading your utilities to be stronger or more versatile.
One of the big reasons to get closer to the residents of Zephyr Town is it can help them create their stall in the Grand Bazaar. Once the Grand Bazaar is successful enough, you will need more stalls than just the farming stall to bring in more customers. Before they will let you help, you need to get closer to them. You can do this by giving them gifts or fulfilling their requests. You can give them anything you can find, but they won’t always like everything you give them. Just because you can give them 90 rocks doesn’t mean you should. Some gifts hurt their bond instead of helping it.
Losing Yourself In The Farm
There are a lot of things to do to help your farm in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. Once you get some more people to live in Zephyr Town, you unlock more areas, like the mountain. The mountain has more flowers and ores you can find. Eventually, you will be able to get animals on your farm. These animals, you can get eggs from chickens or milk from cows. You just have to make sure you feed your animals in the barn.
As you progress through the first month in the game, you get more events like the flower festival. So you will also need to keep track of the dates in the town. You can’t just focus on the Grand Bazaar alone, even if that is the brunt of the focal point. I would lose myself in focusing on the farm upkeep. Especially since you only have a limited amount of stamina each day. You need to focus on having at least some left before you go to sleep. If you reach 0 stamina, your character just falls asleep, and you will wake up with less stamina for the next day. It’s good to get used to a rhythm of watering plants, harvesting, taking care of your animals, and using the mill for your benefit.
That does come with one nitpick I have with the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, though, and that’s no touch screen support. I wish I could just drag and drop into a menu. The funny thing is, you can, but only in the mouse mode. I can’t use the touch screen to do anything, but if I do want a faster experience with moving around menus, I can just take off the Joy-Cons and use the mouse configuration, and it becomes much easier to move around. This is great for putting the game on the TV, but for handheld mode, I wish I could just tap and tap some more.
Overall, I loved my time so far in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, and I will love putting more time into the game. If you love a cozy game that is super easy to get yourself lost in, this is one game to keep your eye on.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar will release on August 27th, 2025, for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
