Mia and the Dragon Princess Xbox Review – a fun ride with a quirky cast

In this review, I shall be checking out Mia and The Dragon Princess from the game development studio Wales Interactive. I think it’s fair to say that ‘Wales Interactive’ has given us an expansive run of FMV games over the years. The fact that there’s a new game every quarter goes to show the faith that they have in their brand. They are unofficially known for being the king and Queens of the FMV genre for the modern age, bringing us absolute classics like ‘Late Shift’, ‘The Complex’, ‘Five Dates’, ‘Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus’, ‘Blood Shore’ and most recently ‘Ten Dates’. They have also brought us indie gems like ‘The Bunker’, ‘The Shapeshifting Detective’ and ‘I Saw Black Clouds’ to name a few. And let’s not forget their FPV horror survival hit ‘Maid of Sker’.

Now I’ve stated before in my past reviews of ‘Wales interactive’ games that they are my favourite developer, not just because I love the games they release, but because each one brings something new to the table. From riveting stories, new gameplay mechanics and delving into different genres, Wales Interactive isn’t afraid to experiment.

So let’s see how they’ve done this time around with ‘The Goonies’ inspired treasure hunting adventure of ‘Mia and the Dragon Princess’.

The story opens up with a really nice animation sequence giving you the backstory of Marshanda and how she came to meet the infamous pirate known as ‘Red Cat’. We learn that the pair have these wrist devices (central plot device) that can lead them back to one another if separated.

After this animatic sequence is finished we open on Marshanda in the present day in a hospital gown confused, on the run and out of place in time. We see that she is wearing one of these wrist devices that leads her to the ‘Dragon Princess’ restaurant owned by the story’s villain Mr Walsh played by ‘Doctor Who’s’ (and the one and only Doctor) Paul McGann. So immediately this sets the tone for this story. It involves pirates and a mystical wrist device leading the main character somewhere which means that the story involves a treasure hunt of sorts.

We are next introduced to the secondary (and titular) Protagonist ‘Mia’ who is a waitress working at the ‘Smugglers Tavern’ bar located directly below the ‘Dragon Princess’ restaurant and owned by Skip played by ‘Line Of Duty’s’ Brian McCardie. We were also introduced to another well-known face here with ‘The Witcher’s’ MyAnnna Buring. They’ve really put a lot of effort into giving us an all-star cast to tell this story.

Without giving too much away we find out that Marshanda is looking to reunite with her pirate pal ‘Red Cat’, however, her plan is disrupted by Paul McGann’s ‘Mr Walsh’ who wants Marshanda’s wrist device in order to find a lost pirate treasure. The story then takes us from the ‘Smugglers Tavern’ all the way to the lost underground rivers of London. It’s a story with some twists and turns that have callbacks to such films as ‘The Goonies’ and ‘National Treasure’.

It’s a good story with multiple different paths to choose from and in the traditional ‘Wales Interactive’ style, each choice unlocks a new scene with a new branching story path leading to a possible 10 different endings.

What’s unique this time around is the very cool and intuitive story tree that lets you visually see all the branching paths that the story can go in. All the paths are greyed out to begin with, but as you unlock more and more scenes these paths will start to fill in. What’s really great about this new feature however is that it gives the option to see what your current path on the story is and also the previous path that you may have taken. This really is a helpful feature as it allows you to visually map out what paths to choose in order to unlock more scenes. I personally love this new feature and hope to see it in future ‘Wales Interactive‘ FMV games going forward.

Another new feature in ‘Mia and The Dragon Princess’ is a status bar that appears each time you make a choice. These stats range from traits such as health, strength and intelligence. It’s a cool feature to have in an adventure treasure-hunting game, however, I didn’t really feel like it added anything to my playthroughs in the grand scheme of things. I get that it’s a new take on the statistics screen that usually shows up at the end of every playthrough in past games which shows you how you acted in that particular sitting, yet I was more focused on the choices I was making and the action on the screen that I would often forget what my stats were saying. Again I get what they were trying to do in showing real-time statistics, however, I personally prefer seeing it all in summary at the end.

One slight issue that I did face was some frame rate issues near the start of the game. Unfortunately, this happens in roughly the same place in each playthrough. This review is based on an Xbox Series X playthrough, however, I did try out the Android version to test this issue and it occurs during the same scene near the start of the game. Now it’s nothing detrimental to the overall experience but it looks to be more a technical issue on the filming side of things more than the gameplay side. Another issue that is a pet peeve of mine (being a filmmaker) is one that I have seen in past ‘Wales Interactive’ games. This being scenes not being correctly white balanced and also sometimes scenes being overexposed with exterior shots or interior windows being blown out. Again this isn’t a gameplay issue, it’s more of a technical issue to do with the filming side of the project. It doesn’t harm the overall quality of the piece however scenes with these issues are more noticeable and detract from the immersion at times.

Overall ‘Mia and The Dragon Princess’ is a fun ride with a quirky cast of characters set in an interesting, but somewhat overplayed story. With new and much-awaited gameplay features ‘Mia and The Dragon Princess’ sets the bar for future ‘Wales Interactive’ FMV games. It’s a game that will keep you hooked with each playthrough, making you want to come back for more.

So with that said ‘Mia and The Dragon Princess’ gets a total score of 8/10.