Mia and the Dragon Princess is the latest edition in Wales Interactive’s catalogue.
Who doesn’t like an action movie? But more importantly, wouldn’t you like to get involved in one while making crucial decisions throughout the time? Because that is exactly what you’re getting with the latest live-action interactive movie, Mia and the Dragon Princess.
Wales Interactive is a British developer and publisher that was founded in 2011 by co-founders Richard Pring and Dr. David Banner MBE and is located in Penarth, Wales. You know the games Five Dates, Ten Dates and Late Shift? Well, you can thank Wales Interactive for those positively reviewed titles. Now, the developer has another game up their sleeves and it’s in a completely different genre.
Mia will be portrayed by Dutch-Surinamese actress Noa Nikita Bleeker, who has played Leo in the short drama, My Whisper to You and recently appeared in the sixth episode of Season three’s sports comedy-drama Ted Lasso as Saskia. The strange woman will be portrayed by Dita Tantang, who featured in projects such as the TV Series Ren as Lyanna and 2021’s movie, One Shot as Lynx Pilot. Plus, she’s an expert in sword fighting and unarmed combat and is a black belt in Chinese Kickboxing.
Mia and the Dragon Princess will indeed have familiar faces, such as British veteran actor Paul McGann who is well known for playing The Doctor in the iconic British television film Doctor Who. He returned to the show and played as Eighth Doctor in 2013 and 2022, who was the incarnation of The Doctor. He also played as Consultant Neurosurgeon John Gaskell in the long-time medical television drama Holby City.
The guy is big-time, especially in the United Kingdom, and it’s great to see him in an interactive movie like Mia and the Dragon Princess. The same goes for another cast member, MyAnna Burin, who is also a big-time celebrity and has featured in well-known shows and films such as Sam in the horror film, The Descent Part I and Part II, Tanya in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I and II, and Tissaia de Vries in Netflix’s The Witcher.
Mia and the Dragon Princess takes you through the life of Mia – a fearless barmaid who meets a strange woman – who later reveals herself as Marshanda, who had just managed to escape from the police who were pursuing her because she caused a major disturbance in a restaurant.
As Mia tries to help Marshanda, she encounters her first problem – Marshanda is unable to speak or understand English. Mia’s best efforts to communicate with her involve using sign language. Things get more complicated when a gang of thugs, led by the main villain, Walsh, takes over Mia’s workplace and holds her and her group hostage. This is where players are required to make crucial decisions to save Mia and the group. As well as defeat the bad guys and find out more about Marshanda’s identity.
The mechanics of Mia and the Dragon Princess are simple yet inviting and are focal for your overall experience. There are five attributes that you must focus on throughout the game. They are Compassion, Intelligence, Bravery, Responsibility and Knowledge. Every choice you make will impact each attribute positively or negatively, as well as the story overall.
Example: one of the characters, named Skipper, asks you to help fix a toilet with a plunger. You are then given two options: ‘Help him’ or ‘Don’t help him’. If you choose to help him, your compassion and responsibility metres will increase. If you choose not to help him, the same attributes metres will decrease.
This may seem straightforward, but here is when things get tricky – Although you will be given up to two decisions to make at a time, you won’t have very long to answer them, and each decision affect your attributes. Also, remember, the choices you make don’t just affect you but also the rest of the group, as their fates are also in your hands.
There are decisions that seem too obvious may also prove to be fatal. Let’s put this into perspective, Mia and the Dragon Princess has ten possible outcomes. So you have to be very cautious about every decision you select to unlock the best possible outcome.
These may make you nervous, but at the same time, your quick thinking and critical thinking skills will be regularly put to the test – and how you will handle such situations. It’s imperative that you pay attention throughout the game so that you don’t miss out on a decision to make. If you don’t make a decision by the time it runs out, the game will make one for you. It will randomly select one that may or may not work to your advantage.
Although it is just a game, whenever you make the right choices, not only do they feel rewarding, but the dopamine in your brain triggers that feel-good sensation – building your momentum as you progress.
And speaking of progress, you can view it in the story tree before, during, or after the story mode – which is basically a diagram that displays the scenes you’ve unlocked from the decisions you’ve selected and how far they’ve taken you. It seems like this feature was implemented to motivate players to play the story repeatedly and select alternate answers to unlock every scene – thus completing the tree.
Mia and the Dragon Princess’ audio tour involves an intro and nine stops, narrated by Sebastian – portrayed by Michael Geary. The stops contain short recordings of Sebastian’s expositions. Some of them are actually quite fascinating to listen to and certainly clarifies a few confusions you may have.
Mia and the Dragon Princess’ immersive gameplay comes with some decent acting as well as a few weaker links. Although the casting lineup is very impressive, some of the acting was not. Some cast members were a little better than others; meanwhile, a few unfortunately furnished cringeworthy performances. Mia and the Dragon Princess’ fighting choreography is better than the acting, but it’s pretty inconsistent. Some were finely executed, and would make Jackie Chan proud. And others were uninspiring, amateurish and goofy.
The choreography behind the stunts was by Aaron Gassor, who is a well-known British Taekwondo content creator who runs a YouTube channel called ‘Ginger Ninja Trickster’. His channel contains just over a million subscribers and has over half a billion views. Having said all of that, the combat is one of the few highlights of Mia and the Dragon Princess. And the action scenes were orchestrated by Marcus Shakesheff – who was involved in major projects such as Game of Thrones and also in Guardians of the Galaxy, and the iconic video game, Batman: Arkham Asylum.
A very intriguing concept, but the story could’ve been better written. There are indeed certain decisions you make that unlock some of the most eye-catching and jaw-dropping facets Mia and the Dragon Princess has to offer. However, there are other segments that amassed tedious and unprofessionally rendered dialogues and so on.
Also, Mia and the Dragon Princess is severely lacking in content. All there really is to do is play the story, view the story tree, listen to the audio tour, and that’s pretty much all it has to offer. And it doesn’t help much when the story isn’t very long. There was one play-through that lasted about 45 minutes, and it felt like you were playing an episode rather than a film. The story can go longer, depending on what decisions you select, but the differences are not much greater.
The silver lining to this is that Mia and the Dragon Princess is replayable, so if for any reason you want to play again – for example, you caused a fatality to a character or you felt like you didn’t receive the ending you were hoping for, you can try again and right your wrongs and unlock other PlayStation trophies along the way.
Furthermore, you will go through alternate outcomes you hadn’t seen to unlock your story tree. The cut scenes become skippable after completing the story once, so if you don’t feel like rewatching parts you’ve already seen, simply press the R1 trigger.
Mia and the Dragon Princess has a lot of potential but not enough to actually reach it. There are some exciting scenes, an impressive casting list, a lot of action, and the recurrent decision-making is engaging, but there are some striking negatives that are very difficult to ignore. And because of that, this isn’t one of Wales Interactive’s best projects.
That’s not to say it’s not worth playing because it is. The trouble is, are you willing to spend on a game that has a short story and its content is extremely limited? Despite the fact, it’s currently low price, and it’s on sale. Your best bet is to wait to see if it becomes free on PlayStation Plus.
