Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is the 6th title in the series, but is in a unique situation since it is from the same developers who brought you all those iconic Harvest Moon titles from 1996 to 2012.
The series still has a niche cult following, mostly because it is one of the most iconic farming sims of all time. While most of the Story of Seasons titles are based on previous Harvest Moon titles, they still add a lot of cool features while sticking to the original theme of the title.
This review comes from someone who has only played two farming sims from the series, but had a wonderful experience playing those games. It is also worth pointing out that none of those were Harvest Moon’s Grand Bazaar 2008 title, so I’ll be reviewing the game from a fresh perspective.
The Bazaar Lures You Like a Moth to a Flame
Initially, I went in thinking it was going to be a day-by-day farm sim, which it is if you think about it. You start by managing your farm, growing crops, meeting the wholesome townsfolk, discovering new things, and selling what you can.
However, the allure of the Grand Bazaar happening every Saturday really makes you push farming sessions every week because that’s the best time to sell what you have been working so hard for. It’ll devour you.
What Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar does well is that it holds up the rewards, keeps you working for almost an hour, and lets you reap rewards at the “grand” bazaar day. It is hard to play the game like your typical farming sim, where you can stop at the end of the day and resume the next time you play.
There’s just too much to remember. Which crops do you want to sell and keep? What items are expiring? Should you cook these dishes or wait? Which items are you keeping again for upgrades or requests? Are the crops going to make it in time for bazaar day? There are many more, and you need to know all these during the bazaar day. If you stop playing, you can forget all these and waste a lot of time trying to remember everything.
However, if you push through, you are rewarded handsomely at bazaar day. At first, I thought this was a double-edged sword. People might stop in the middle of the week and forget what they were trying to do, constantly fearing opening the game again. However, it became a benchmark for ending your session, always leaving you satisfied.
See, the allure of the Grand Bazaar pushes you to new heights every Saturday. There are stalls that sell random pets, and if you are looking for a specific one, you’ll have to check it out every Saturday to see if they are available. Around four stalls sell upgrades, most of which enhance your experience through quality-of-life, offer a new feature, or just indulge in fancy new things.
You’ll sell everything you can and buy everything at the same time, giving you the satisfaction of having a successful week. Some exclusive crops, seedlings, and more become available only during bazaar day, too.
The Purest Cozy Game I Have Ever Played
When people think of a cozy farming sim, it is kind of synonymous with Stardew Valley in today’s world. However, the biggest difference and also the reason why I called Story of Seasons the purest cozy farming sim is that there’s no combat. Most farming sims add that feature, but there are a lot of people who despise doing that type of content because they just want to relax, interact with the NPCs, and manage their farm.
The character design, while the same as the 2008 title, was simple but wholesome. I do wish they dug deeper into the characters. They could’ve fleshed out Felix’s story even more, dug deeper into Samir’s past, or June’s past, just to name a few.
Since most of the gameplay is fine as clockwork, there was a lot of opportunity to keep the player invested in Zephyr Town. It was fun for the first 20 hours when you are setting up, but it becomes a bit monotonous waiting for significant events to happen.
Gameplay Mechanics Were Great, But It Could’ve Been Better
There were several mechanics and designs that surprised me. Things like your pets handling your animals and them becoming happy and healthy without much tender care really saved a lot of nuisance.
The quick “hello” or greeting is also a godsend to help you get your relationships up, as they count towards a real greeting. You don’t want to greet the same person a hundred times, alternating among five responses. It also saves you some time not to interact with everybody one by one during events.
There are a lot of things going right, but there were also things they could’ve done better. For one, cooking and its item management system are almost unbearable.
Since different quality items don’t stack, they take up a lot of space in your never-enough-space storage room. With this inventory system, it is difficult to get what ingredients you need for a recipe, especially considering that there are hundreds of recipes available in the game.
While it is amazing that there are that many recipes, it was a pain getting all the ingredients and finding out which dishes you can cook and sell. It is like you are incentivized to focus on just two or three recipes and forget about everything else.
I thought there would be an upgrade that could have a “magic” pantry where accessing the kitchen will automatically have access to your storage, hopefully including the windmill storage, too. However, that was not the case, at least for me, who is two years into the game and already finding the secret items and tools. If there is, I’d retract this one immediately.
I wouldn’t fixate that much on this one big issue since everything else was great. I’d definitely recommend Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar to any cozy fans out there, even with its $59.99 price tag.
- User-friendly farming mechanics.
- Tons of content with secrets to uncover.
- Interesting characters to interact with.
- Polished recreation of the 2008 classic.
- Pacing is a bit unbalanced, giving you some monotonous sections when progressing too fast.
- Item stacking and cooking could use some reworks.
Published: Aug 26, 2025 08:59 am