I used to be pleasantly stunned to listen to that the following STORY OF SEASONS sport can be a remake of Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar as a result of I view it as one of many extra obscure within the collection. After I noticed it introduced in a Nintendo Direct, I knew I wished to assessment it if potential since I had performed the DS sport. Taking the nostalgia goggles off, it’s a largely nice sport with a number of nitpicks right here and there. Nonetheless, I can confidently say that you probably have performed it earlier than, you’ll love the quality-of-life updates Grand Bazaar has made on the Nintendo Change variations.
One change I actually like is the addition of the glider. The world of Zephyr City already helps you to leap round behind buildings and on roofs with surprisingly few invisible boundaries, so having a glider you’ll be able to catch breezes in to experience throughout the city is an additional enjoyable strategy to journey. However I do are inclined to get carried away, faceplanting into rivers. I typically discover myself being rescued by the Nature sprites, shedding stamina, and unintentionally depleting it sufficient to move out. One other optimistic change is the addition of a stall that you may invite to affix the bazaar, permitting you to rehome any pets, whereas within the DS title, I used to be caught with so many pets as a result of there’s no strategy to eliminate them as soon as you purchase one. That’s partly why I fell out of enjoying the DS sport, since I felt dangerous neglecting my immortal pets.
Talking of the titular Bazaar, your foremost purpose, in contrast to different video games within the collection, is to breathe new life into the city’s bazaar by going up in ranks. Your life on this sport will largely encompass working round doing varied actions to achieve supplies, crops, and livestock merchandise to promote at your stall on the finish of the week. You possibly can adorn your stall to get sure buffs and, when you promote sufficient, you refill a bar on the prime of the display screen that may mean you can invite a number of of the Nature Sprites to do a Lightning Spherical kind of promoting earlier than the time runs out. I discover the mechanics mildly irritating since to go to the slot and put an merchandise in your desk on the market, you should transfer there and place your self. I want it could snap you to the slot as an alternative, as a result of in the course of the rush of promoting issues, I stored lacking the place the slot was to promote to a ready buyer. You get a sure timespan to promote within the morning and the afternoon, so being evenly inconvenienced by one of many sport’s details irritates me generally.
Let’s speak extra in regards to the characters. I like that you may select to have a personality’s sprite artwork by their dialogue field as an alternative of simply seeing the in-game mannequin. However the sprites have additionally been given a blinking animation that I discover pointless and a bit distracting. (Particularly when the 3D mannequin blinks as nicely.) I like that voice appearing will get included for full scenes and a few dialogue, together with the power to alter the voice language to English or Japanese. I just like the voice appearing within the Japanese dub greater than the English one. However my favourite voice actor for the English dub can be the one for Gabriel, beforehand Angelo, within the DS sport. He offers an endearing, “adorkable” supply that jogs my memory of Tom Holland’s appearing for Spider-Man/ Peter Parker.
And since we’re on the subject of affection pursuits, there are twelve! On prime of the unique ten, STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar provides two extra. There’s Arata, a dense however variety man who trains within the mountains, and Diana, a workaholic and agent despatched by the Bazaar Evaluation Board to evaluate Zephyr City’s bazaar.
I’ve already talked about Gabriel, the city artist, however apart from him, I’ve a comfortable spot for the brothers Jules (beforehand Ivan) and Darek (beforehand Dirk), and their battle with opposing personalities and principally elevating one another with their mother and father gone. I truthfully didn’t acknowledge Daisy, now Maple, together with her redesign wanting extra bland and fewer distinctive than earlier than; was this executed to make her look extra mature? I want the bachelorettes had extra distinct personalities in comparison with the bachelors; like Maple and Sophie (beforehand Sherry) are fairly related to one another in each persona and voice appearing. On a extra optimistic be aware, with twenty save slots, you’ll be able to marry every bachelorette with eight extra slots to spare, which is a large enchancment over the unique’s two!
So as to add one thing in regards to the gifting mechanic is my want for extra specifics about characters’ lists of likes and dislikes. An instance of this could be after I gave one of many twin women, Sylvia (beforehand Cindy), a Magic Blue Flower, and he or she disliked it, regardless of her profile itemizing one in every of her two preferred issues being ‘Blue’. I believe objects needs to be particularly listed of their profiles, or possibly a system to maintain monitor of what objects every character preferred and disliked as you study extra about them, like what Stardew Valley does with its characters. Later, within the Fall, I gave Sylvia a Magic Crimson Flower that she preferred, which is sensible to me since she wears pink, so I believe it is a legit error and he or she’s supposed to love the colour ‘Crimson’ as an alternative.
There are additionally references to different video games within the franchise, with cameos and plots of books Jules recounts studying, which I discovered cute. There are plenty of notable references to Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness. Is that this a tease for a STORY OF SEASONS: Island of Happiness or, possibly, Sunshine Islands? And I might be remiss as a Sonic fan if I didn’t point out that whenever you eat meals to regain stamina, the bar filling up seems like Sonic drowning.
Total, STORY OF SEASONS: Grand Bazaar is a devoted remake with nice music and enjoyable gameplay. This Nintendo Change 2 Version addresses stuttering seen on the unique Change when issues are too busy on display screen, and the framerate enhancements make the sport run significantly better and smoother. It’s like going from a DVD to Blu-ray, albeit at $10 extra, because it’s priced at $59.99 on Change 2. I’d nonetheless suggest this sport (on both platform) to all STORY OF SEASONS followers, and extremely suggest it to followers of Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar, as it’s a well-done remake that carries the spirit of the unique.
