Marco, an orphan with missing memories, and Arco, a dragon who rules the galaxy, were hunting for treasure in space! On one of their adventures, Marco was given a clue to the whereabouts of her mother. Their next stop, her birthplace - Earth!
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They did the funny dance
El juego es bonito, pero la historia una ponzoña
The universe Tokyotoon have created in Marco & The Galaxy Dragon is lively and unique; perhaps it's just my overwhelming love of space adventures talking, but I found the first quarter or so where they really focused on that aspect to be incredible. I was disappointed when most of the story ended up taking place on Earth, because I think the level of imagination here suited something more like the prologue. I want to see the main characters hang out with funky aliens like the delightful El Skeleton, not human high-schoolers! Perhaps I'm not exactly the target audience for this visual novel, but good lord do I love El Skeleton I wish he was in it for more than 30 minutes. You can't just have the goodest skeleton boy abandoning his villainous ways to become a chef and barely dedicate any time to that! I do not want to see the human characters go to the beach I want to see the skeleton and his goofy henchman deliver oden to people, how hard is this to understand
The presentation is exceptional. This cannot be overstated. So much unique art was created for this relatively short adventure, and the animated sequences are joyous perfection - the first one in particular had me smiling from ear to ear for its entire runtime. I'm a huge sucker for those exaggerated proportions, stretchy bodies, detachable limbs, and slapstick visual gags! They did such an immaculate job capturing the appeal of both classic cartoon shorts and the sillier side of modern anime, I love it very much. The final battle in that exact same art style also goes surprisingly hard, like if they had Timeless River Mickey Mouse kill Sephiroth at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 in heated combat (I dunno maybe that does happen, I haven't beaten any of the games after 2). Anyway, if they made a whole film or TV show of Marco in that style I would be there day 1 no questions asked.
The humor has its ups and downs depending on what part of the plot you're reading. The first section is hilarious, and there were many times I laughed throughout afterward, mostly in the animated scenes. Unfortunately, a lot of the jokes in the VN proper can be a little on the loud, grating side of comedy - nothing close to the level of cringe I experienced playing River City Girls 2, but the humor made me groan just as often as it made me laugh. The characters are... fine. Outside of Marco, Arco, and Haqua, they're mostly just archetypes because they don't get any real chance to develop. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, because the story is short and isn't about them, but again, if they're going to have a mostly static supporting cast integral to the plot yet mostly relegated to comedy bits, I would rather have it be lovable aliens like my favorite boy El Skeleton no I'm not letting this go
I've avoided mentioning the story so far because it's the one part I feel negatively about, which is of course a big deal since this is a visual novel. I think my biggest issue with Marco & The Galaxy Dragon is that it feels like a compilation film for a 26-episode anime that doesn't exist. I had no problem with its pacing prior to the OP - it was brisk but in a cohesive and charming way. After that, it speeds up considerably, first feeling ever-so-slightly rushed before veering into SparkNotes territory around the halfway point. Things do slow down considerably near the conclusion, but a lot of the in-between stuff just kind of happens, and the lack of almost any narrative text renders certain scenes nearly incomprehensible. It's extremely, extremely impressive that they created something like 1000 CGs for this VN, and I want to make it clear that I am not knocking the effort put in at all. But there are important moments where they don't use CGs to show you what's happening on screen, meaning you're just left to guess what's going on from the dialogue, because the most you're ever getting narration-wise is "(Marco eats the croquette)." This might be a translation issue more than a writing issue, though, as a lot of the text read awkwardly to me, simultaneously feeling too literal and too localized.
One of the bigger side plots happens about 2/3 of the way through, and it really gave me that feeling of mid-season anime story arc. It involves an alien species called The Love, and has a very interesting concept which leads to some good gags. It also feels incredibly contrived and tries to make a ham-fisted point about the human condition or something I guess, but I have no idea what direction they were trying to take it in because it was so poorly executed. The whole thing just came across as completely inconsequential and, despite tying into the overall themes of the story and being capable of potentially furthering certain characters' arcs, ultimately nothing of note comes from it. I think spending so much time on this pointless diversion made me a lot harsher on the writing than I would have been otherwise; something about it just annoyed me and rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the squandered potential?
In execution, the whole thing reminds me a lot of The Peacekeeper Wars, the miniseries hastily produced to conclude Farscape's story by condensing season 5's planned 22 episodes into 3 hours - in both, I could tell entire story arcs had been haphazardly squished into <10-minute deviations from the main plot, making me wonder why they were even included at all. The biggest difference between the two is that I did not spend 80+ hours with the cast of this game prior to its similarly emotional ending, and thus I didn't really feel anything when the credits rolled. The story and characters simply hadn't been built up enough for me to care about them the way the writers wanted me to, and I think all of that comes from the abrupt pacing.
My feelings about this VN are so conflicted that I very much want to recommend it to everyone but I also feel like I don't want to recommend it to anyone. I'm gonna say buy it if you're at all interested, if only to support the developers for making something so cool and out there. Also, I'm gonna be real with you, if they did like a Steins;Gate Elite thing and remade this using nothing but the cartoon footage? My issues with the writing and pacing would no longer matter because it'd be 10/10 peak art.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and you're gonna need to use RivaTuner to limit the frame rate in this game, because if you don't it'll run at like 1000 FPS and make your graphics card melt
The presentation is exceptional. This cannot be overstated. So much unique art was created for this relatively short adventure, and the animated sequences are joyous perfection - the first one in particular had me smiling from ear to ear for its entire runtime. I'm a huge sucker for those exaggerated proportions, stretchy bodies, detachable limbs, and slapstick visual gags! They did such an immaculate job capturing the appeal of both classic cartoon shorts and the sillier side of modern anime, I love it very much. The final battle in that exact same art style also goes surprisingly hard, like if they had Timeless River Mickey Mouse kill Sephiroth at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 in heated combat (I dunno maybe that does happen, I haven't beaten any of the games after 2). Anyway, if they made a whole film or TV show of Marco in that style I would be there day 1 no questions asked.
The humor has its ups and downs depending on what part of the plot you're reading. The first section is hilarious, and there were many times I laughed throughout afterward, mostly in the animated scenes. Unfortunately, a lot of the jokes in the VN proper can be a little on the loud, grating side of comedy - nothing close to the level of cringe I experienced playing River City Girls 2, but the humor made me groan just as often as it made me laugh. The characters are... fine. Outside of Marco, Arco, and Haqua, they're mostly just archetypes because they don't get any real chance to develop. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, because the story is short and isn't about them, but again, if they're going to have a mostly static supporting cast integral to the plot yet mostly relegated to comedy bits, I would rather have it be lovable aliens like my favorite boy El Skeleton no I'm not letting this go
I've avoided mentioning the story so far because it's the one part I feel negatively about, which is of course a big deal since this is a visual novel. I think my biggest issue with Marco & The Galaxy Dragon is that it feels like a compilation film for a 26-episode anime that doesn't exist. I had no problem with its pacing prior to the OP - it was brisk but in a cohesive and charming way. After that, it speeds up considerably, first feeling ever-so-slightly rushed before veering into SparkNotes territory around the halfway point. Things do slow down considerably near the conclusion, but a lot of the in-between stuff just kind of happens, and the lack of almost any narrative text renders certain scenes nearly incomprehensible. It's extremely, extremely impressive that they created something like 1000 CGs for this VN, and I want to make it clear that I am not knocking the effort put in at all. But there are important moments where they don't use CGs to show you what's happening on screen, meaning you're just left to guess what's going on from the dialogue, because the most you're ever getting narration-wise is "(Marco eats the croquette)." This might be a translation issue more than a writing issue, though, as a lot of the text read awkwardly to me, simultaneously feeling too literal and too localized.
One of the bigger side plots happens about 2/3 of the way through, and it really gave me that feeling of mid-season anime story arc. It involves an alien species called The Love, and has a very interesting concept which leads to some good gags. It also feels incredibly contrived and tries to make a ham-fisted point about the human condition or something I guess, but I have no idea what direction they were trying to take it in because it was so poorly executed. The whole thing just came across as completely inconsequential and, despite tying into the overall themes of the story and being capable of potentially furthering certain characters' arcs, ultimately nothing of note comes from it. I think spending so much time on this pointless diversion made me a lot harsher on the writing than I would have been otherwise; something about it just annoyed me and rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the squandered potential?
In execution, the whole thing reminds me a lot of The Peacekeeper Wars, the miniseries hastily produced to conclude Farscape's story by condensing season 5's planned 22 episodes into 3 hours - in both, I could tell entire story arcs had been haphazardly squished into <10-minute deviations from the main plot, making me wonder why they were even included at all. The biggest difference between the two is that I did not spend 80+ hours with the cast of this game prior to its similarly emotional ending, and thus I didn't really feel anything when the credits rolled. The story and characters simply hadn't been built up enough for me to care about them the way the writers wanted me to, and I think all of that comes from the abrupt pacing.
My feelings about this VN are so conflicted that I very much want to recommend it to everyone but I also feel like I don't want to recommend it to anyone. I'm gonna say buy it if you're at all interested, if only to support the developers for making something so cool and out there. Also, I'm gonna be real with you, if they did like a Steins;Gate Elite thing and remade this using nothing but the cartoon footage? My issues with the writing and pacing would no longer matter because it'd be 10/10 peak art.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and you're gonna need to use RivaTuner to limit the frame rate in this game, because if you don't it'll run at like 1000 FPS and make your graphics card melt
Acid trip in a saturday morning cartoon format put through a slapdash blender. It has soul though
Plusy: Guardians of the Galaxy w wydaniu anime, niesamowita jakość wykonania
Minusy: brak
Minusy: brak
Fue lo que "Lamunation" quiso ser, la diferencia es que Marco sí lo consiguió. A pesar de que esta obra es una mierda para gente básica que nunca ha tocado una VN en su vida, creo que incluso alguien que si está metido realmente en este nicho lo disfrutaría, al menos ese fue mi caso, ya que bueno... Tengo una debilidad con las obras japonesas que se salen del tipico cliche o humor japones y se esfuerzan en ofrecer algo, ya con solo eso de ofrecer algo único, su clasificación es minimo un 3/5.
Creo que fácilmente podría llegar a un 4/5, pero aparte de ser demasiado básico para mí, hay ciertas cosas que dejaron que desear y me refiero a la historia y hey, no es "mala", pero trataron de meter tantas cosas en tan poco tiempo que se siente que no se terminan en centrar en una cosa ya que podemos estar cagándonos de risa, pero de la nada el tono se pone serio. Si tan solo se hubiera centrado en una cosa, ya sea ser una historia seria o ser un slice of life con toques de fantasía y comedia absurda, hubiera sido lo mejor, pero, en cambio, combinan ambas cosas, la cual sin ser mala, si se siente pretencioso al querer abarcar dos géneros opuestos.
Quitando eso, lo demás es una delicia. su ost y en especial el marcado estilo artístico y sus animaciones son una puta delicia y no sé si estoy en lo correcto, pero el estilo artístico me parece similar al que suele se utiliza en las canciones donde aparece una mona china con cara de drogadicta/edgy... Lo siento, a pesar de que me la paso escuchando música alternativa, odio lo mainstream, por lo que no tengo ni idea de como se llamaba el artista, pero aun así me recordó arto a su estilo de animación y no sé si sean la misma persona.
Y para terminar, agradecido con el de arri- espera, no existe... Bueno, agradecido con el dibujante que ufff papasito, tremendas CG se marcó con las waifus. No soy fan de las vacas, pero este man le atino al tamaño y proporciones justas.
Creo que fácilmente podría llegar a un 4/5, pero aparte de ser demasiado básico para mí, hay ciertas cosas que dejaron que desear y me refiero a la historia y hey, no es "mala", pero trataron de meter tantas cosas en tan poco tiempo que se siente que no se terminan en centrar en una cosa ya que podemos estar cagándonos de risa, pero de la nada el tono se pone serio. Si tan solo se hubiera centrado en una cosa, ya sea ser una historia seria o ser un slice of life con toques de fantasía y comedia absurda, hubiera sido lo mejor, pero, en cambio, combinan ambas cosas, la cual sin ser mala, si se siente pretencioso al querer abarcar dos géneros opuestos.
Quitando eso, lo demás es una delicia. su ost y en especial el marcado estilo artístico y sus animaciones son una puta delicia y no sé si estoy en lo correcto, pero el estilo artístico me parece similar al que suele se utiliza en las canciones donde aparece una mona china con cara de drogadicta/edgy... Lo siento, a pesar de que me la paso escuchando música alternativa, odio lo mainstream, por lo que no tengo ni idea de como se llamaba el artista, pero aun así me recordó arto a su estilo de animación y no sé si sean la misma persona.
Y para terminar, agradecido con el de arri- espera, no existe... Bueno, agradecido con el dibujante que ufff papasito, tremendas CG se marcó con las waifus. No soy fan de las vacas, pero este man le atino al tamaño y proporciones justas.