Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Preview - A grand reimagination of a comfy farming simulation

The Story of Seasons series is making a big comeback with its latest outing: Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. As you may have guessed from the game's subtitle, this game is all about setting up shops and having a go at selling various goods on the open market. It’s a far more laid-back affair, and that’s something we discovered when we had a chance to play some of the game ourselves at a recent Marvelous media event. 

For more reading, we also have an interview with Story of Seasons series manager Hikaru Nanako.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar begins with a simple premise: it’s up to you to make Zephyr Town thrive again, and that will only happen through the daily life activities involving farming, raising animals, and selling wares in your brand-new bazaar. 

Before that happens, however, there’s a little bit of character creation to be done. Because this is a life simulation game, it seems especially important that you craft your ideal “avatar” as it were. There are a lot of options here too - from the usual hair, eyes, skin color, and voice, you can choose body types, eye shape, name, and even preferred pronouns. You’re not really locked out of anything, so essentially the only limitation is your own imagination.

Once that’s completed, the demo shifts to the story proper. It’s here we’re introduced to Zephyr Town and a man named Felix who introduces both himself and the village. He’s here to convince you to set up shop, and should you accept, he offers up some items to sell and a brief tutorial of how that all works.

The bazaar itself is fairly simple in how it operates - you’ll place items into your stock for the day, then you can place them on the selling table for customers to see. When the shoppers come out, you can attract attention to your goods by tapping a button to ring a bell. From there, they’ll gather over by whichever item they want, and you can interact with them to complete the sale.

Once you’ve sold out, or restocked then sold out, it’s time to close up shop and continue to the other aspects of daily life, such as farming, interacting with people in town, and even romance.

By far the biggest part of Grand Bazaar, however, is the farm and resource management between seasons. In the demo, we skipped ahead into our playthrough to the Summer, where things have been going quite well. Our character has their own house where they can rest, their own stable with plenty of animals, and of course, the farm itself just outside.

As time ticks on, you can explore around, petting and feeding animals, or collecting items from them, such as wool and eggs. You can tend the farm, water plants, seed new ones, and gather other materials on the field. There’s quite a lot, and it’s all held in your inventory, which can be portioned off at windmill locations if necessary. Windmills are also handy because they’re essentially crafting areas for new materials.

The seasonal aspect comes into play here, too. There might be a hurricane coming, so it’s important to set up fencing around the farm field to make sure your crops stay safe. If you don’t, well, they might not be there after the storm passes.

The rest of the day involves a bit of trekking into the village, where you can talk to NPCs, take on tasks, and build relationships. Despite the village size, your character can easily get around with jumping platforms and a handy glider with the tap of a button.

You’ll have to go back home at nightfall to get some rest, however, so be sure to manage time carefully. Back at the house, and after you rest, you can customize yourself further with different outfits and more.

Once Saturday rolls around, it’s time to reopen shop at the bazaar, and it does so at a specific posted time. As the initial tutorial showed, it’s incredibly easy to get set up and go for both morning and afternoon shifts - you can even decorate the bazaar to look however you want. 

You can even spend time shopping for yourself - you’re not required to run your shop all the time, it’s all very optional. Shopping for yourself allows for even more customization, too, including creating outfits and accessories like hats and glasses.

In Grand Bazaar, you’ll be chatting up people around the community as well, some of whom you can eventually develop a deeper, more romantic relationship with. There’s a bit of depth with these, too, including voiced scenarios that dive into spending time with one another.

After a brief time with Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, it’s clear this is very much a cozy, low-stakes game built with a lot of love. The cute and colorful style pairs well with the whimsical mountain scenes and characters found along the way.

This is the type of game one might play to relax with, or at least that’s the impression it gives off so far. While it’s certainly a reimagining of sorts, it’s being done on a much bigger scale, complete with voice acting and a bigger, living world to go with it. On PC in particular, the visuals are sharp, and the presentation is nothing but smooth so far.

As for where this expanded story happens to go, we’ll just have to wait and see when the full version of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar releases for both PC and Nintendo Switch on August 27, 2025.