I've made a bit of a tradition of looking forward to the next Wales Interactive title. The developer is one of few that still explores the FMV space, and therefore creates video games that are significantly unique when compared to other projects on the market. But while I've found fun moments in its recent titles, those being Bloodshore and Ten Dates, its latest project, Mia and the Dragon Princess, fails to deliver on multiple counts.
The story behind this game revolves around a barmaid known as Mia, who is thrown into a life of chaos when meeting a strange woman on the run from the police. As the narrative evolves, you begin to learn that this woman is a pirate from 17th century south-east Asia, who was literally frozen in time after her ship sunk in the arctic, and that she is directly tied to a bizarre historical mystery that involves the descendants of a legendary pirate who now own and run a dingy bar in London.
Needless to say, there are a lot of moving parts here, and Mia and the Dragon Princess fails to explain them in much depth at all. You don't really feel interested or connected to the story and the mystery it attempts to weave, because there's no time to develop it well. You're just thrust into the next scene without a chance to digest or unpack what happened, and this is the exact same with the characters and the development they receive. No one person feels all too enthralling, as there's no real explanation of their motives or what drives them. And as the pirate who was frozen in time cannot speak any English, there's also a nasty language barrier that the game ineffectively handles.
But this is all a scripting issue, because while a lot of Wales Interactive's titles are quite small in concept but are expanded by the branching narrative options it uses, Mia and the Dragon Princess attempts to do too many things at once, which stops any one part of the game from excelling. Too many characters and too many interweaving plotlines. Yes, this does make for a reason to experience the other story branches by purposely choosing a different answer than before, but as the story is so ineffectively told in the first place, it is also not a solution to the glaring issues the game faces.
On the topic of the narrative, the choices that the player gets to make over the story are pretty repetitive all the way through the game. While protagonist Mia does have attributes that track the way she treats the people she meets in-game, when several choices in the game ask you whether you want Mia to be "assertive" or "kind", it doesn't really do a whole lot for making a compelling branching dialogue system. Instead of asking me whether I want to unclog a toilet or not, it would've been more thrilling to have more options when it came to solving the ancient and long-forgotten puzzles that the cast come across as the story progresses.
The actual performances from the cast are nothing to write home about either. Sure Paul McGann attempts to lift his dialogue to new heights with a quite unsettling and apathetic performance as the game's main antagonist, but the rest of the cast struggle to make much out of the characters at all. That being said, the fight scenes are genuinely well choreographed and you can tell that a lot of planning, practice, and emphasis has gone into producing them.
The game also has very peculiar performance issues that constantly sees audio dipping out while the game waits for you to make a decision. Also the transitions between scenes are incredibly janky and severely affect the immersion of the story, as they come across as hard cuts to black screens. At times, Mia and the Dragon Princess feels more like a student film, than a game from a developer who has already shipped tons of similar FMV experiences.
This is why I find it hard to see Mia and the Dragon Princess as one of Wales Interactive's best works. Compared to the simpler and more well thought out Ten Dates, this game feels like a step in the wrong direction in a multitude of ways. With less moving parts and a more cohesive plot, this could potentially have been something more thrilling, but as it stands right now, it's hard to appreciate a great deal about this game.
