Forum - View topicGAME: Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Game Review
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yeehaw
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Is there an option to play with japanese audio?
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2764 Location: United States |
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The game is confirmed to have English dubbing, and Marvelous/XSEED is usually pretty good about providing different audio language tracks, so I think you can expect Japanese and English audio.
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Octonian
Subscriber Posts: 34 |
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These farm sims always seem so cute and I can imagine really enjoying them. But -- and I know this is just me overthinking and politicizing something that really isn't that deep -- I can't get past the unrelenting focus on commerce and capital accumulation as core mechanics.
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 816 Location: PA / USA |
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Back on the older ones, a lot of it simply just had to do with the gamification of the activities that you were participating in. I assume that with this new one (have not played it yet), they're leaning into the idea that in Japan right now, a lot of local businesses, farmers, and shops all network together to sell their home-grown wares & put their community on the map. I've you've ever seen any of those monthly subscription snackbox services, they actually source (or claim to) the stuff you get in those from the little local food boutiques and farms & shrines. Are they making a live-able profit from the service? No idea. Stardew actually played around with the commentary about the corporation taking things over, so if you want to actually have a game that sort of addresses that angle, then maybe Stardew would be worth looking into. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 926 |
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There is a JPN language option.
That's a very valid fear! But Grand Bazaar doesn't lean in that direction. It's very "holistic," I guess you'd call it? The bazaar stalls are all operated by neighbors or people in the community (no megacorps here), and the bazaar itself is the main source of local commerce, both from people visiting the town and from people getting a chance to peddle their wares/services. It's a literal farmer's market, with more of an emphasis on getting to know the people around you and what they make. What's more, you (the farmer) actually help other people get their own stalls started, and they offer stuff like carpentry or gift-wrapping services. The bazaar isn't just a hub of commerce, it's the lifeblood of the town. So it's all about the community coming together and supporting each other. A few months back, I interviewed the Story of Seasons series manager, Hikaru Nakano (who also directed Grand Bazaar). He explained that the core concept for each Story of Seasons game is answering "How does a farmer live their life?" In Grand Bazaar, they're specifically looking into how a farmer prepares their goods for the market. So in Grand Bazaar, this isn't framed as "capital," it's framed more as "cooperation." You even increase your bond with your neighbors when you sell them goods at the bazaar. So even if, at its most cynical, you were just selling ore and jewelry at rip-off prices, you're still helping the town by virtue of your work revitalizing the town bazaar (and in turn, revitalizing the local community). |
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Regalli
Posts: 141 |
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I know Trio of Towns on the 3DS also had a strong focus on community building over making money - you might have goals to ship a certain amount of goods to a specific town, but you're also meant to spend a lot of your money on revitalizing specific town features (things like building a bell tower for the American West-themed town, or reopening the bathhouse for the Japanese-themed one, or fancying up the inn in the Pacific Islands-themed one,) and apart from rebuilding one bridge that doesn't seem to make much difference when you look at it, the towns DO change and look better the more of those tasks you do, and some of those tasks include raising your friendship with the villagers. A Wonderful Life has you earning money on the farming side of things, but the core of the gameplay experience is supposed to be building a family and influencing how your kid grows up (and it just received a lovely Switch port a year or two back).
Heck, even in the first Bokumono published under the Story of Seasons title, where the focus IS on improving the town's trading reputation with other countries and winning the leases for community-owned farmland over rival farmers, bringing in more vendors from other countries has a noticeable impact on the town. You'll see more dialogue about tourists as the town grows, and unlock the ability to decorate in public areas in the town proper. This was a step back from Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, where you had to rebuild THAT town from scratch. I never dug far enough into Pioneers of Olive Town to really see if my farmer had an impact on the town the same way - at the very least, it did a lot less of the backloading villagers and making cosmetic upgrades to the town than the 3DS titles - but I know there WERE goals for it over time. Friends of Mineral Town stands out as not having any greater goals than "get married if you want" and "build the best farm you can," but it's also a port of a GBA game. So yeah, a lot of the more recent Story of Seasons games, at least, have goals beyond just "accumulate money" and the money you DO earn often goes into things beyond just improving your own farm or sitting on it. If anything, I suspect the bazaar features will lower the risk of it becoming TOO easy to make ludicrous amounts of money - in a lot of games there's some easily-available early product that can be processed without too much trouble into something really lucrative (in ANB, it's hot milk as I recall; in SOS1 it's gold linen cloth,) and the trends to keep track of and the minigame to sell goods seem likely to make things a lot more variable. Probably for the best, for as much fun as it is for me personally to speedrun making the sewing shed in SOS1 to get my gold linen cloth factory. (Sidenote: Don't try and speedrun SOS1. It still takes me multiple sittings to do it per save file, a LOT of unskippable cutscenes, and a LOT of save-scumming for bricks.) Since I *am* the odd person who genuinely enjoys SOS1's early game where you have to manage your resources and save shippable goods for days when the vendors are in town, and Grand Bazaar being the one title from the Nintendo handhelds I missed, I've been looking forward to this one very much. |
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PumpkinMouse
 Subscriber Posts: 113 |
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I’ve been waffling on whether to pick up Grand Bazaar after bouncing hard off of Olive Town and Mineral Town, but the community aspect was what I loved most about the original Story of Seasons game (my first game in the Harvest Moon franchise) and Trio of Towns, so I think this combined with what you said about SOS veterans enjoying this more than newcomers has finally convinced me to pick this one up! 
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