We say it each time another release comes around from the fine folk at Wales Interactive and Good Gate Media, but it only proves truer and truer – we’re really digging this recent run of live action choose your own adventure games. The latest release, Mia and the Dragon Princess, carries this line of thought on, and might well be the best release from the studios since Tavern-favourite The Complex.
If you’re familiar with this style of game already, know that mechanically at least it is business as usual; we watch some live action footage and occasionally chime in by selecting one of two choices, with the bigger dilemmas skewing the story off in all manner of directions. Repeat plays are all but essential to get a full idea of the story, as well as alternate endings and character moments.
Mia and the Dragon Princess wins us over with some fantastically British humour, leading into moments like this:
But also just generally being an entertaining watch. Main character Mia (played by Noa Bleeker) plays her role wonderfully, full of charm and sarcasm that had us chucking along far more than we expected to. Noa is far from the only standout performance though, with the full cast giving a brilliant effort; we especially enjoyed Jon Xue Zhang as barman extraordinaire, Michael Geary’s Sebastian, and Paul McGann as big bad Walsh. Dita Tantang as the titular Dragon Princess Marshanda gets less to work with vocally – speaking almost entirely in an ancient dialect – but this is more than made up for how much of a badass she’s portrayed as.
In fact, while we liked the writing and overall story, special mention must go to the action scenes. More often than not, Marshanda is single-handedly taking out several of Walsh’s goons at once, with some quick cut camera work and effects giving her a fantastic sense of strength and ability.
That’s not to say the story is any slouch, mind you. We’ve not seen every path available in game yet, so there’s still a few blanks to be filled in – such as how this ancient princess is in modern day London – but it strikes a fine balance between serious moments, action, and the aforementioned British comedy that definitely won me over. We’ve filled up our hard drive with more hilarious clips from Mia that we can’t share due to not wanting to spoil too much story, but here’s one more tease for you:
As we say, we’ve not seen every path yet, but thankfully Good Gate have included a very comprehensive story map that can be accessed at any time. Here, we can see which choices had a direct effect on the path we end up on, as well as the result of previous play sessions and any choices we’re yet to find. As is traditional now, we’re able to skip scenes we’ve previously seen on repeat plays to save some time, though even on our longest session we only took roughly 90 minutes to get through the story. As expected, there are twists and turns galore, and even a few moments that caught us off guard in other ways.
The only real niggle we’ve come across so far is in how some of the scenes are handled when the ‘bad’ choice is made. For example, when Mia firsts discovers Marshanda, she is hiding behind a dumpster as she attempts to evade the police. Choosing to help her stay hidden leads to a natural feeling scene where Mia tries to converse with Marshanda, eventually taking her into the bar that the story takes place in, in order to help her.
Siding with the police sees Marshanda vanish from view, only to re-appear behind Mia as the cops move away. Mia then audibly says ‘yeah, I probably should have tried to help you’, before they resume their positions behind the dumpster and the exact same scene from before plays out. There’s obviously only so much scope possible in a title such as this, but in this same 10 minute section there were at least three times where we chose the ‘bad’ choice only to have the same sort of thing happen.
While it doesn’t have the most expansive of story options, thankfully this niggle is far less noticeable further on, and there’s still plenty of scope to alter where we end up, and even who survives.
Conclusion
Mia and the Dragon Princess is another solid effort from the teams at Wales Interactive and Good Gate Media. The cast all put in some excellent performances, the story is brief but also full of interesting twists and turns, and it had us laughing far more than expected to with some classic British humour. For our money, this is one of the best live action adventures out there.
Become a Patron!This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
