Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Is A Perfect Fit For The Steam Deck

If you haven't yet, follow us on X (Twitter), Mastodon, or Bluesky to know when we post new articles, and join our Reddit or Subscribe to us on YouTube to check out our content and interact with our awesome community. Thank you for supporting us!

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar was provided by Marvelous for review. Thank you!

When it comes to iconic farming simulators, Harvest Moon is one of the first series that comes to my mind. It's one of the pioneers of this genre, and it's great to see it alive and well. The next entry in the series, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, is coming out soon, and it's shaping up to be a great new addition to the franchise. I am having a blast so far, but I do need a little more time to complete my review. However, I still wanted to document my experience and let it be known whether it's a good experience on the Steam Deck, and I can confidently say that yes, it is.

If you have been following the game, you are probably not surprised. The game is also releasing on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, so if it can run there, then it arguably should be good on the Deck as well, right? Well, not all games are so straightforward. Some games have a specific build made for optimization on the Switch, while the Deck will just use the PC build of the game. Because of that, I still find it worthwhile to test. Thankfully, Grand Bazaar feels like the perfect fit for the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED, and it's clear that optimization was very important to the team.

The default settings put almost everything on max apart from Shadows, which is on standard, but it runs perfectly regardless. The game automatically caps to 60 FPS, but by changing the framerate cap to 120, we can easily hit 90 FPS. At 90 FPS with default settings, I am seeing no framerate drops with battery drain hovering around 12W - 13W at any given time. This keeps it at around 4-4.5 hours of battery life, and for a full 3D game that looks this good, I am overjoyed.

I did try setting Grand Bazaar's Shadows to High to see what it would look like and how much of an impact it would have on battery drain, and it wasn't that worthwhile. Yes, you can turn it on and get some extra minor shadows here and there, but the majority of the game looks exactly the same. However, the battery drain spikes upwards to 14W, which I found unnecessary given the very small tradeoff to visuals.

If you decide to cap the framerate to 60 FPS, you are able to push up the shadows to High with almost no effect on battery drain. It still has minimal visual changes, but the battery drain still sticks around 10W. So, if you really want those small shadows, or to save on battery life, capping to 60 FPS will be very do-able. However, the game can easily handle 90 FPS for those with a Steam Deck OLED, so really, it's a win-win situation.

I am a fan of saving battery life, so I would personally play at 60 FPS, which still feels extremely smooth, and put Shadows on High. The fact that I can keep battery drain down, still get smooth gameplay, and bring up visuals slightly make playing this way the most appealing. Best of all the worlds, if you think about it.

The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, so we have those black bars at the top and bottom, but it does have cloud saves and great controller support. There are no HDR settings, but the OLED screen helps the game really pop.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar can be wishlisted ahead of its August 27th release on Steam. It doesn't have the Verified badge yet, but I have no doubts that it will. Our review of Grand Bazaar will also be coming soon, so look out for our full thoughts on it!

If you enjoyed this article, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that will help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got you covered!