Of all the examples of comfort food gaming that are out there, I’d have to say that Story of Seasons is my comfiest and tastiest. Right back as far as the Game Boy – when the series was still Harvest Moon (remembering that the “Harvest Moon” titles that get released today are not the same series), I have immersed myself in each and every one of them for many hours at a time. Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is no different. In fact, it might just be one of my favourites.
Grand Bazaar was, initially, a Nintendo DS title, but this Switch release isn’t a simple remaster or port. It’s a total, top-to-bottom remake, and takes full advantage of the power of the modern Switch to display a vibrant art style that is immediately welcoming and warming to the soul. I’ve played so many of these games now that the opening tutorial and first in-game day or so has become a chore to labour through, but Grand Bazaar was somehow the exception – likely because it’s introduced with humour and personality.
Once you get through that introduction, you’re given your broader objective (which is, like all Harvest Moon titles, to roll your sleeves up and get farming, with the aim of using your hard work to help to restore the town around you). What is different with Grand Bazaar is right there in the title: Not only do you need to grow and farm the produce, but then you need to take it to market and sell it for profit.
This is an excellent mechanic. You start out with a single table on market day, and can only put out a few items for sale (which is just as well, as you won’t have much farmed anyway). You need to make sure you have a nice range of items available to catch the attention of each shopper, and naturally the better the quality of the stuff you have, the more it will sell for.
I’ve actually participated in farmers’ markets in the past. Growing up in rural Australia, I had plenty of friends who either were from farming families, or were friends of farmers, and so I’d regularly be roped into helping out with a stall on the weekends. It was a lot of fun, given that prices could be negotiated, people appreciated the opportunity to buy directly from farmers rather than see the supermarket’s supply chain take its cut and underpay the producers, and there was often stuff there that you just wouldn’t find in stores. Grand Bazaar, in a very colourful and twee fashion, gives me a hit of nostalgia for those good old days, and as simple as the mechanics are – it’s hardly a simulation – it is exceedingly well implemented.
Another key mechanic is the wind – as the in-game town’s name (Zephyr) should imply. Early enough in the game, you get a glider, which you can use to explore around town more easily. There are also windmills that you can operate, which use the power of wind to churn out goods for you to sell at the bazaar. Story of Seasons has always represented the symbiotic relationship between farmers and the weather – in previous games, whenever it raine,d it meant you didn’t have to water the crops, and all that extra time at your hands was the perfect opportunity to go flirt with your beau. Wind is also something that real farmers watch closely, so it’s good to see it abstracted into the game like this.
Speaking of beaus, there are plenty of them to choose from in Grand Bazaar. You can romance any of 12 options, and then go through all the usual Story of Seasons routines of giving them gifts, marrying and starting a family with them. If I’m being entirely honest, this is always the side of Story of Seasons that I find the least engaging, because the characters are written in such a basic manner that they’re really just a single typecast personified. I always go for the “sweet girl next door type,” and I never stop being boring enough to try one of the other typecasts. It’s always the same process of figuring out what they like and then just inundating them with gifts until you wear them down, anyway. Like always, this relationship system is sweet as all heck, and I am fully aware that I’m in the minority when I say it’s not a favourite feature, but it is what it is. It’s not like I don’t like the relationship system, either. It’s just secondary to me to the meditative process of growing plants and tending to animals.
Story of Seasons doesn’t exactly paint a picture of the realities of the life of a farmer. It is, after all, one of the hardest, if noblest, jobs. But the sweet utopia that the series offers is pristine escapism, and Grand Bazaar has one of the strongest concepts and executions that we’ve seen in the series. This game is a total delight.
