• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: TOKYOTOON
• Publisher: HuneX
• Release Date: April 28, 2022

Content warnings: Rated T, kidnapping, slavery, murder, genocide, violence, blood, some fan service-y CGs of teenage girls.

Marco & The Galaxy Dragon sounded like a pretty heartwarming story based on its eShop description. It’s a story about Marco, a young woman kidnapped by aliens as a child, who travels back to Earth with her dragon friend Arco to find her mother 10 years later.

Since her kidnapping at age 6, she’s traveled the galaxy to find and sell treasure for her “father”/boss/owner, an anthropomorphic alligator alien. Her most recent find is a special “Lizard Stone” that everyone wants to get their hands, claws, or tentacles on. The boss wants it for himself, but Marco warns that keeping it will cause nothing but trouble.

Naturally, Marco brings the stone with her to Earth and tries to sell it with the help of a broker and the Galactic Auction. But no one wants to risk getting involved with such a sought after item. Poor Marco, Arco, and the hilarious “Emergency Rations” creature unintentionally end up visiting some of the world’s greatest attractions as they try to locate the town on her “treasure map”: a picture of her and her mother.

Eventually, they somehow make it to Gold Cord City. Lacking funds, they’re lucky that some of the residents take pity on them. They befriend several girls who are around the same age as Marco, and their interactions really made me laugh.

Meanwhile, up in space we have an alien who reminds me of Thanos (Marvel); he goes around destroying planets, and wants his daughter to follow in his footsteps. Astaroth also wants the stone in Marco’s possession, and sends his lackeys down to Earth along with his daughter Haqua.

The people of Earth are apparently aware of the aliens (as well as their Galactic Auctions). After aliens kidnapped a large group of children from Earth – including Marco – 10 years ago, the Earthlings have built defenses against the aliens.

So we have Marco trying to find her mother and sell the stone as she helps her new friends fend off the aliens. This is a kinetic visual novel for about 99.9% of the time, with only one choice that only seems to affect what kind of fan service you get for the next scene.

As the majority of the cast consists of young girls, I wasn’t terribly comfortable with the fan service CGs. There isn’t any romance, and the fan service wasn’t the focus of the game, but it felt really out of place with the rest of it.

I think that some of the plot could be a bit confusing or unresolved at times – especially the details about Marco’s family. The translation seemed decent for the most part, but there were times that it felt rather clunky (particularly with the metaphors and explanation of “love”).

Other than that, I have a lot of good things to say about Marco & The Galaxy Dragon. The game is fully voiced in Japanese, and they used the soundtrack to extremely good effect. I was not expecting to hear “Waltz of the Flowers” when I did, but I absolutely loved it. (Sometimes the music drowned out the voice acting a little, but it’s not too bad.)

One of the most impressive aspects is the insane amount of CGs. There are approximately 1,000 “images and stills” in addition to the great animated scenes. I don’t think I’ve ever played a visual novel with so many images before!

Combined with the voice acting and soundtrack, the art does a great job of capturing the emotions of the characters in each scene. (I did notice that some scenes with animation and dialogue had some delay with registering the input for the next dialogue, but those scenes don’t happen as often.)

Despite the dark content warnings listed above, for the most part this has a very silly, ridiculous story. I’d say about 75-85% of it is just fantastically hilarious nonsense before it shifts to a darker tone more towards the end. I really needed something light that could make me laugh, and laugh I did (with just a little bit of tears at the end).

If you’re looking for a short but silly and sweet experience to last you about 6 hours or so, I’d recommend Marco & The Galaxy Dragon. It’s not without its flaws, but the artistic quality and the way it elicits (mostly positive) emotional responses from players makes it easy to recommend! 🐉