As someone that grew up playing farming games with Harvest Moon titles like A Wonderful Life and Friends of Mineral Town, the new remakes under the Story of Seasons banner have been a fun blast from my past. However, I never got around to playing the 2010 title Grand Bazaar for the DS, so I was coming into it fresh. That being said, there were plenty of points where I just forgot that this was a remake, because this game feels so modern in its gameplay and presentation. If I didn’t know any better, this could be a new game in the series, so this isn’t something I’d only be able to recommend to fans with nostalgia for the original.

As part of the preview for this title I was able to play the first in-game month of Grand Bazaar, a large slice of the game that allowed me to get acclimated to my farming life in Zephyr Town as well as get used to the main new gameplay mechanic, the titular Bazaar. This town’s bazaar has seen better days, and you’re tasked as the new farmer in town to sell your wares there and help revitalize the town. This makes your weeks largely surround the bazaar days, as you want to sell the items you farm there but also there are large numbers of vendors only at the bazaar on Saturdays, so it’s a huge rush to earn and spend money on that one day, making things fun and hectic.

My first impression was that this game looks gorgeous. Going for a soft shaded animated look, everything looks vibrant and charming, especially wandering around the town. The music is also great, too - the rainy day theme was a personal favorite of mine. Not to mention that the performance on Switch 2 is immaculate and this makes for a really good incentive to sink hours into the gameplay.

As for the gameplay, while the farming is what you’ve come to expect from a farming sim, the added depth to running a stall at the bazaar is a decidedly enjoyable element. I also liked the focus on wind in the game - early on I got a glider and, depending on where the wind is blowing, it can get you to places quicker or even to areas you previously couldn’t get to. The platforming is imprecise, but it’s not a big focus of the game. The wind also affects your farming, as the vast majority of the crafting (besides cooking) is done in windmills that move faster or slower depending on the speed of the wind.

The start is a bit slow, especially since you have limited space for farming and storage when you get started that you have to expand, but across the hours I’ve played this first month it gets more and more compelling as areas open up. A big part of the gameplay so far is opening new stalls at the bazaar, which require solving some quest to achieve, but it feels very satisfying to get to the next bazaar day and see a new stall that you helped build, and to see the ranking of the bazaar go up as a result of your work.

I’m excited to keep sinking my teeth into Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar for the final review, but from this preview I can tell you that this is a genuinely worthy addition to the franchise and a game I’ve really had fun exploring.