I was so excited when Grand Bazaar remake got announced because I love the Story of Seasons games. I was ready to dive in when I got the game. The character creation is pretty good with a wide range of hairstyles and hair colors. However, I was disappointed that there was not a good variety of skin tones especially for darker skin. Other than that, the character design is pretty good. I created a character I was happy with and found a hairstyle for her that I liked and I was ready to begin. I will say it does feel like a true remaster with the updated graphics and voice acting for all the characters in the game.
Grand Bazaar's setting is Zephyr Town and the town used to boast a spectacular bazaar featuring merchants from all over the world, but it's fallen on hard times and is not what it once was. This is where you the farmer come in. It's all up to you to help revitalize the farm, bring the bazaar back to its former glory, and help out the town itself. No pressure! You get to meet the townspeople and the mayor shows you the farm. You get some starter seeds for the season and the tutorial is fairly straightforward about how to plant and harvest your crops. There is no shipping bin in the game because the bazaar is held every Saturday in two shifts. The first shift is from 10 AM - 2 PM and the second shift is 3PM - 7 PM giving you plenty of time to sell all your wares.
 |
| Watering the crops. |
The farm itself is pretty big, giving you three fields to work with. I used one for a variety of crops, one for fruit trees, and one for tea trees to harvest a ton of tea leaves. The big draw to Zephyr Town is the windmills and focusing on wind energy. You have three windmills; red, yellow, and blue. You start with the red windmill on your farm and each of these windmills process different products. For example, the red windmill processes milk and eggs into cheese and mayonnaise. In order to unlock the windmills you need to provide materials to the villager Isaac who will repair the red windmill for you. With the other two you have to reach a certain level rank with the bazaar which will unlock some quests you have to do for Isaac.
When using the windmills it's important to note how strong the wind is that day. If there's no wind processing times for items will be slower. This is also important for the glider you use to get to higher places throughout the various areas of Zephyr Town. Being able to get to those higher spots gives you access to some rare ores which can be used for crafting more expensive items to sell at the bazaar. You can buy animals at the bazaar like cows, sheep, alpacas, and buffalo. This is where you can also get a variety of cats and dogs which you can train to help with the animals on the farm. Animals are a staple of the Story of Seasons games and you do have to take very good care of them by doing the usual things; feeding them, brushing, petting, and making sure they get lots of sunshine and fresh air. The happier they are, the better quality milk, eggs, and wool they'll provide for you.
 |
| Taking care of the cute animals. |
Farming and ranching aren't the only things you can do. There is of course fishing and bug catching. Sometimes the villagers will ask you for a favor like catching a certain type of fish or a certain number of bugs. The fishing isn't bad so I didn't mind doing it. The bug catching is a little trickier with having to sneak up on the bugs and catch them with your hands. I do wish we could have just had a bug catching net to make things a little easier. There's also foraging various types of mushrooms and flowers. The flowers are important not just because you can give them as gifts, but you can process them in a windmill to make different colored dyes for clothing. This ties in to getting different outfits for your farmer. One of the merchants at the bazaar can make the outfits for you as long as you provide the materials of the types of wool and dye required. There's a lot of great looking outfits and I spent a lot of time unlocking them especially some really cute sweaters that I liked. The outfit gets sent to your closet at home. You can change your outfit and your look whenever you want just by going to the closet.
 |
| So many cute outfit choices. |
There's also a group of five nature sprites that will help you out, but not for free of course. Don't worry, it doesn't cost you money. They're very cute and each one has a set skill that helps make things easier for you. Say you want better quality fish, then you donate a bunch of fish to the sprite that's all about fishing. This not only ranks up your friendship with the nature sprites, it increases the quality of items so they can sell for a higher price at your bazaar stall. That's not all the sprites do though. When you're selling items at your stall, you can use a skill called Cheer Time which allows the sprites to help out by dancing and using their skills to sell your items faster with additional perks. It's a wonderful thing to have especially towards the end of a bazaar day shift ensuring you're able to sell out of all your stock.
 |
| The cute nature sprites. |
It wouldn't be a Story of Seasons game without the romance. You have 12 romance options to choose from, six bachelorettes and six bachelors. You can chat with them and giving them their favorite gifts definitely boosts the relationship points as well as fulfilling their requests. There is potential for Queer romance because whether you play as a masculine or femme character all the romance options are open to you. If you have trouble deciding who you like, you can get a love confession from all of them and see all the cute scenes and date all of them as well until you decide which one you want to marry and you can only marry one. Whoever you choose gets you another charming scene and the rest of the group the relationship status changes to great friends.
For the non romance options, you can make friends with them and you do get some adorable friendship scenes with them. Giving them their favorite items helps and doing favors for them will boost the friendship also. If you remember their birthday and gift them their favorite thing that also adds to the friendship points. It's not one sided however. Your romance interests and townspeople will gift you things too in the form of various items, cooking recipes, and sometimes crafting materials. There are some grinding aspects to the games such as getting enough materials to upgrade the farming equipment, but I didn't mind because I was enjoying myself.
There are a lot of great festival events like a tea party and animal shows where you can choose an animal to compete. I enjoyed these because they're not only fun, they break up the farming days. The rewards for winning the competitions are pretty nice, plus you get an automatic upgrade for your animal products. I love the take your time and putter around as much as you want mentality of Grand Bazaar and I did just that. Winning world rank with the bazaar was fantastic and you get to see some cute scenes with the ending credits. That's basically the gist of the main story to get world rank, but the game lets you keep playing afterwards. I was amused that when I chose someone to marry and we had a lovely wedding, there were more ending credits. Again, the game lets you keep playing and I'm having a good time doing that and I'm currently on year 3 so far. Grand Bazaar brings a lot of wonderful things to the table if you love farm sims. It's cute, fun, and has a lot of charm with the characters and art style. The story itself is easy to follow and the fact that you can keep playing and living your best farm life is wonderful because it's so much fun to play.
Side note: Thank you to everyone who supported Ron and I throughout this really challenging year. We just celebrated my birthday and our 18 year wedding anniversary. We're grateful we got another year together. Thank you for all the love and support on Twitch and for reading the Mothergamer blog. We hope everyone has a happy new year!
 |
| I chose Arata for my romance. He's a sweetie. |
*Story of Seasons Grand Bazaar is available to play on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and Steam
*Join the Motheramer community on Twitch where we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer
No comments:
Post a Comment