Review by: Meghan Watt

Aside from being abusively adorable, the Harvest Moon series has always been about balancing out remedial farming chores with some new feature that will keep players entertained. With Grand Bazaar, this balance is so nearly achieved that it's actually painful to play. You can see the finish line. It's there. Just a quick sprint would earn this game an easy B+. Maybe even an A and an Editor’s Choice. But without that final bit of necessary tweaking, the newest installment of Harvest Moon is as agonizingly boring as it is cute.

As the newest farmer in town, you are immediately handed a hoe, a watering can, and an absolutely unreasonable task to improve the village's rather bare marketplace. Why the mayor would trust a rookie and stranger to build his grand bazaar is a mystery, but with the little money you have you plant your first handful of seeds, water 'em and then wait for the week to end.

And wait.

….and wait. After six days of religiously watering your beloved turnips and gathering whatever flowers and rocks you can find around town, it's time for the first day of the bazaar. With a ring of your little bell, the first customers arrive and purchase your pathetic excuse for products. Hopefully, by the end of the market, you've earned enough money to grow a few more plants so that, at the next bazaar, you can earn more money to buy even more plants.

Of course, this is all expected from a Harvest Moon game. What would the series be without its trademarked repetition? However, in this case, the pace is so slow that you could essentially watch a real plant grow before your darn virtual batch of turnips start sprouting. Since every hour takes a minute, it takes more than 15 minutes for a normal day to transpire. If you want to yield maximum results, you have to wait the whole day out so you can water your plants twice.

Multiply that by about thirty before the bazaar is finally upgraded and the season changes from summer to fall. At this point, your crops instantly die no matter how many days are left before harvest, and you thank the game for mentioning this in a timely fashion (aka, the morning prior). But, as consolation, you can now purchase new items and use valuable tools previously unavailable to you.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the rub. You can purchase some new items and use a few new tools. Yes, you've played the game for about seven hours, and you probably understand the nuances of virtual farming life, but you're probably not responsible enough to buy oil or cookware or other various necessities. And goodness knows you're not man enough to properly court the ladies (or guys, if you make your farmer a female).

What's infuriating is that the game seems to tease you for these inadequacies. You're given a pasture but not the ability to buy livestock. You're finally given access to the windmill, but can't yet purchase the right materials to make anything useful. You have a kitchen but, until winter, no cookware to use it. And you can talk to girls, but they will start rejecting your gifts as soon as they realize you can't offer more beyond what you've picked up off the ground.