After Playing ARPGs like Diablo, Story of Seasons Turned Me Into a Real Farmer

After hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours farming loot in ARPGs like Path of Exile, Last Epoch, and Diablo 4 this year, I finally found the loot in the most unexpected game – Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.

All those hours of trying to farm enough currency to get mirror-tier items in Path of Exile or farming summoning mats to join uber rota groups to get Mythic uniques in Diablo 4 were nothing compared to getting my farm cellar, finding my dream wife, and my shiba inu winning the pet show in SoS: Grand Bazaar.

I Never Thought I’d Enjoy Farming Sims More than ARPGs

I’ve sunk ungodly hours into Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, playing for over 75 hours in three weeks. While I do the same for the newest leagues of Path of Exile 1 and 2, ARPGs were always a bittersweet experience.

I’d spend the first few days farming as fast as I can to get chase items like Headhunters and Magebloods while they are cheap. It was always a gruesome grind, but it always felt rewarding. It was the ridiculous grind of knowing that if you play a little bit slower, the item can skyrocket in price, making you spend a few more days farming for the same item that makes the whole experience a bit sour.

Diablo 4 was way more relaxing before trading was a thing, but finding rota groups for Mythics is still always easier during the first few days of the season. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to Story of Seasons.

While cozy farming sims aren’t exactly my favorite genre, I am familiar with their appeal and have played a few of them like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, and My Time at Portia. I just never knew it would consume me as much.

I would experiment with crops to find the ones that yield the best profit, much like calculating the most effective map farming strategy in PoE. Every time I thought of stopping, I would say to myself, “Probably on the next bazaar day,” which is every Saturday of the week.

Most of the exciting stuff happens during bazaar day, and that’s mainly because all your hard work throughout the week culminates at the bazaar sale. You’ll get an influx of gold and use that immediately on the same day with all the other bazaar stalls.

You’ll find cool quality-of-life upgrades like double jump, farm expansions and upgrades, seasonal items, decors, outfits, pets, animals, and much more.

There’s always something new in every one or two bazaars, as long as you keep fulfilling requests. That’s the main pull of Story of Seasons’ Grand Bazaar theme. It eerily reminded me of ARPGs just because of the build-up of farming “X” amount of time to farm currency and do this one big spending spree to upgrade your build, mostly in Path of Exile.

Would I Recommend Story of Seasons to ARPG fans?

There’s only going to be a very niche number of players coming from ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile who are going to love farming sims. I’d probably recommend it to those who enjoy the currency grind rather than finishing hard content or getting a cool build to run perfectly.

There are those players who really love just getting rich in games. Personally, I’m also one of those, but only to a certain extent. I want to have a booming empire in Anno, a Simoleonaire in Sims, holding Bitcoins rather than weapons in Tarkov, and buying everything with gold rather than starting a family in Story of Seasons.

I could be wrong, but I’d definitely recommend a cozy game like Story of Seasons to anyone who hasn’t tried any SoS title or any cozy farming simulators for that matter.

If you are thinking of trying out Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, you can check out our review here.