Seriously? Did Natsume get a new design team that has never played a harvest moon game in their lives?
Things I was expecting:
A good storyline:
The last two Harvest Moon titles for DS (Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands) had storylines that involved meeting numerous different goals, befriending the villagers, selling a lot of produce, etc. And by meeting each goal new places would open up, new seeds available, new sub villagers and main villagers would arrive. I was expecting something similar for Grand Bazaar but with a different story. Instead, the storyline is: Our bazaar isn't making enough money, help us make more. The only goal is to make a certain amount of money at each bazaar, which doesn't call for anything other than gathering, growing, cooking as much as you possibly can to sell at the bazaar for money, just to turn around and spend it all at the bazaar on things you need. Island of Happiness involved a shipwreck and starting a life on a new island. Your hard work would result in the revival of an island. There was also a Goddess and a Witch, which is included most Harvest Moon titles but not in Grand Bazaar.
The Basics and them some extra:
Every Harvest Moon game that I have played (HM N64, HM Friends of Mineral Town, HM More Friends of Mineral Town, HM Back To Nature, HM A Wonderful Life, HM Another Wonderful Life, HM IoH, HM Tree of Tranquility, HM Animal Parade) has always had these features in one way or another:
-A lot of places to unlock as you progress through the storyline
-Mining: Each game had at least one mine in which you could work your way down many levels and collect rare ores, find rare fishing spots, and sometimes even a rare recipe or two. (A Wonderful Life had you mine in the archeologist's camp with a shovel to collect rare minerals and stones, which is still a version of mining).
-A shipping bin (A Wonderful Life had the main idea of what the bazaar is in Grand Bazaar, a small shop where villagers could purchase your products, even that game still had a shipping bin).
-Separate storage for different items: A cabinet for flowers, minerals, etc, a fridge for crops and other food products, a tool box, and the feeders to store the animal food in.
-Character customization: mfomt let you change your characters color of clothing via the mirror, and the Wii HMs let you change your clothing as well. Animal Parade gives you 2 choices of characters to choose from per gender at the start of the game, so I was expecting some form of customization in Grand Bazaar.
-The main places available for normal business hours (similar to IoH and Sunshine Islands): The carpenter shop, a general store (which sells seeds, basic cooking ingredients, tools, etc), restaurants, a church, an animal shop, a hotel or two, etc.
-Fishing at any place with water.
-Lot's of main villagers that move in as you progress through the story line, and a lot of sub villagers that stay in the hotel like in IoH and Sunshine Islands.
-Saving whenever you want and continuing at that point.
-The farm degree: Island of Happiness had this feature which was really nice, you'd get prizes for things you did. Sunshine Islands improved upon the farming degree for example the things you complete in the farm degree like mining a lot will allow you to go to lower areas of the mine.
-Recipes: You learn them from different people by giving gifts or finding them in random places.
I'll go down that list above with what Grand Bazaar has:
-Places you unlock: The horse track and a water shrine behind the waterfall. Island of happiness had a whole other section of the town to unlock, a tropical island area, the mine area, etc. Sunshine Islands has a bunch of islands that get unlocked as you progress through the story line.
-Mining: Who needs mining? Obviously the game designers think it's not needed.
-A shipping bin: Who needs that? Just sell all your items to Raul in his seed shop, the only shop in town. If you have a stack of items that have the same star rating then you can easily sell those in a group, but if you have a ton of things with different star ratings then have fun selling them one at a time. Or wait a week until the bazaar to get enough money to feed your animals and buy seeds.
-Separate Storage for different items: Pssshhhh, that's too much work. Let's just throw everything into one storage area, your animal feed, cooked dishes, foraged items, crops, flowers, bugs, jewelry, and then let's make it so that items that aren't the same rarity will never be able to be stacked! Sounds jolly right? I run out of room constantly, and to upgrade your storage space you have to buy it at the bazaar. Forget having your items organized. And it totally makes no sense to keep your animal feed in the feeder, nah let's say that the animal and chicken feed have to be placed in the storage or else it won't show up in the feeder. Makes total sense, right?
-Character customization: I'm stuck in some funky purple hat, a hot pink sweater... let's just say my character is 5 and tried to dress herself. The other female characters in the game look a lot better than my character. I'd like to be able to change my clothes or at least lose the hat. Some people don't mind, some people do. Game designers should realize that and add some sort of options for the players.
-The main places: Everything is at the bazaar which you can only visit once a week. The only places in the main village are Joan's café (who makes an obnoxious moaning sound... what's with the lame sound effects? Who wants to hear that every time they speak to a villager?) which sells food dishes where you just magically get the recipe, and Raul's shop which sells seeds, animal feed, and medicine.
-Fishing: Yea, there's fishing... but you have to be standing on a dock and there is no ocean (who needs a beach? Forget that!), and every time you have your fishing pole out and stand on the dock it asks you: "Would you like to fish?" Then you select yes or no. Really? So, me standing by the water and selecting B with my fishing pole doesn't tell the game that I want to fish? It asks you after every fish you catch, when you try to fish again after setting your fish in your pocket, "would you like to fish?" Yes or no. It's obnoxious. I feel like I'm playing a game for a 2 year old. They might as well ask me when I press the control pad: Would you like to walk? Select yes or no.
-Lot's of main villagers and sub villagers: The only new main villagers that move in are Emiko and Amir. Other than that you see some old main villagers from Island of Happiness but they open shops in the bazaar and aren't apart of the main village. IoH and Sunshine Island have a ton of sub villagers that you can visit with, and they move in and out depending on how much you do certain things such as fishing, mining, foraging, etc. On top of that some main villagers from Friends of mineral town show up and stay in the hotel during different seasons which is also nice.
-Saving whenever you want: No, not allowed. Finish your day completely and then save or else save half way through the day without finishing it. People do have lives, sometimes they need to go somewhere last minute and need to save right then and there. Who thought it was a good idea to not allow you to save whenever you want? If it's 2pm in the game, and I need to leave then I have to either close my DS leaving it on until I return, or save at 2pm then when I come back and turn on the game I have to start the next day.
-Farm Degree: Meh, who needs that? Maybe someone was too lazy to add it into the game along with mining, a beach, a church, sub villagers, and more than two places to unlock and explore.
-Recipes: You only get them by purchasing them at a restaurant. It's better to receive them random places, makes it a fun challenge and in reality everyone has their own special recipes that they share once they become close to people, so it would be cool if they had left that alone.
A couple other features that were taken out:
You aren't allowed to pause the game by entering the menu. The only way to stop time is to close your ds or if you are in the middle of a conversation (time doesn't pass when you are talking to people). I pressed the menu button and ran downstairs to get something to eat and when I got back up it was like 7pm because they took that simple feature out of the game.
Time should still stop in buildings and in your menu; it's always been that way. It's nice to go through your menu and select what you want to give someone without them walking away and hopping over the river to the other side of town before you even get the item in your hand.
And yes, I'm going to mention it again, who thought it was a good idea to have obnoxious sound effects? Every person I talk to is like: WAAAHHH HAAAAHH HAAAAH! Or making some creepy sound like Joan or Ethel, if you've played the game you all know what it sounds like. Rawnchy.
My friend was playing the game and had a heart event with the Mayor's daughter Sherry. During the event Ethel and and Stuart (both elderly characters) walked up and interrupted their conversation. Stuart thanked Sherry for the massage she gave him and then Ethel (his wife) got mad and then Stuart acted like he left something on the stove and ran off home. Really?? Seriously?? The Mayor's young daughter Sherry was giving Stuart, a married old man, a private massage that his wife didn't know about and she got jealous? You can't think of something more appropriate like she helped clean their house? Or made them dinner when they were sick? I'm starting to think the hotel they own is something more than a hotel. I dunno what's up with the designers of this game, but I'm about to go get a degree in game design because clearly they don't have any talented designers working for them at the moment.
Don't get me wrong, the game isn't completely horrible, but when you've played a ton of Harvest Moon games and have certain expectations, and then play the game and realize how easy and boring it is, notice a lot of things that could be better, and notice a lot of things that were taken out, it gets frustrating to play. The bazaar was fun the first couple of times it happened, then it became really repetitive. Bug catching is a good feature, so is jumping around all over the place. But I find myself finished with a day at 2pm and having nothing to do.
Overall, I'd say get a better design team and don't take out things from previous versions. Definitely don't make less to explore and less to do. I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone; I'd recommend Sunshine Islands because at least that version has a lot more to do, and fixed the issues with the previous version (Island of Happiness).
A positive note: The free stuffed horse that came with a pre-ordered copy of Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar is adorable. Too bad the game sucked.