izigame.me

"Mia and the Dragon Princess" is a very short (about 1h per playthrough) interactive movie with an absurdly bad and mostly nonsensical story about people in contemporary London looking for a pirate's treasure.
1. Story & Setting
You play Mia, a barmaid in London, who runs into a lost woman who doesn't speak English, knows Martial Arts, and is actually a pirate queen from several centuries ago. The woman has a mysterious device on her wrist that leads her to a painting in the bar, showing a famous pirate. Mia tries to unravel the mystery around the woman, while at the same time a gang of armed thugs is trying to force the bar's owner to sell the establishment to their boss.
The premise of the story is pretty nonsensical, and characters often make decisions that don't make much sense either. For example, there's a scene where Mia obtains a gun, takes cover, shoots upwards in the air twice for absolutely no good reason, and then finds out that she has only one bullet left while two enemies are closing in on her. There are paths through the story that feel very disjointed, especially if you don't have much background knowledge from previous playthroughs, though the path to the "good" ending is handled a bit better than others.
The game introduces more than 20 characters (bar staff, patrons, tourists, and thugs) in the span of just a few minutes, but doesn't spend time with any of them apart from isolated scenes, which can be highly confusing. Many characters only play any role in one or two scenes (while still being present in others), some are just there to be killed. While it's usually easy for me to feel some form of "relationship" even to side characters, this game didn't give me enough time or information to do that for any of them, they just kept getting killed left and right for no particular reason. Even the titular "Dragon Princess" remains distant because she only speaks Indonesian (which usually doesn't get translated), and her face isn't particularly expressive.
There are several fighting scenes, which I found boring without exception. This may be a matter of personal preference, I just don't find watching people beat each other up particularly exciting or interesting. The game also frequently shows silly scenes where several enemies surround a single fighter, and then approach that fighter one by one, so that they can all easily be defeated. I also tried to view the fights from a purely technical angle, and that failed as well, because the camera was shaking so much that it was often difficult to even process what was going on.
Occasionally, the game attempts to lighten things up with humor. Some of the jokes do land, some of the absurdity is indeed funny, and a few I even found clever, but the vast majority of the humor is primitive and uninspired. For example, you're apparently supposed to find it funny how the "Dragon Princess" gorges herself on food she isn't used to, or that (for whichever reason) penis-shaped glowsticks keep getting shaken around.
In short: Story-wise, this may be one of the worst scripts that I've ever encountered in an FMV game. And I've played a lot.
2. Gameplay & Mechanics
The gameplay is very standard for an FMV game: A scene plays out, you get to make a choice, and then the next scene plays. There are no quick-time events, puzzles, or any other gameplay elements. You always have to decide between two options, there are never more than that.
There aren't a lot of choices in the game, and many of them, especially at the beginning, are fake - they have no effect whatsoever on the gameplay. Many choices are clearly bad, and you have no reason to take them apart from curiosity or a completionist approach. The game shows you how scenes are connected, which path you are currently taking, and which paths you have taken before, in a "story tree". This could be very useful, but it fails to show some crucial decision points, while it does show choices that don't matter. Nevertheless, I think such "story trees" are a great feature for players who want to explore all the content, and I hope to see them in more FMV games.
There are 10 different endings to find, but some of these are just of the "you did something stupid and got instakilled, try again" type.
The game keeps track of 5 stats (like intelligence or bravery), which get raised or lowered depending on your choices. However, I never noticed a situation where these stats would actually have affected the gameplay, so they seem to be purely cosmetic.
3. Graphics & Presentation
On a technical level, the quality of filming feels decent, though quick cuts and the shaking camera often made it difficult to grasp what was going on. It doesn't help that some characters tend to speak very fast and/or in a dialect that I (as a non-native speaker) had trouble understanding, especially when there was also background noise present. I had to rely on reading the subtitles, but that in turn made it even more difficult to process particularly fast-paced scenes.
Some props (e.g. the compass-like device that the Dragon Princess carries on her wrist) look like cheap plastic toys. The environments outside of the bar looked mostly boring and could have used more detail, though the bar itself was decently designed - it's just hard to appreciate because of all the people standing and running around all the time.
I honestly can't say much about the acting, because the game never gives any actor time to shine. At least I didn't notice any obvious bad takes.
4. Usability & Accessibility
The game offers selectors for resolution and screen mode, a brightness slider, and a single volume slider. Subtitles can be toggled on or off, and their color, size, and background can be adjusted. Another toggle allows you to remove the timer on choices, which is good.
The game is controlled with the mouse, they keyboard can only be used to access the pause menu by pressing Esc.
There is only one savegame slot, which gets overwritten after every decision.
There is a skip function for scenes that you've already seen, but it could have been done better. Scenes are treated as "unseen" even if you've already seen several minutes of them, and just one part at the beginning is different. So if you do several playthroughs, you'll still watch identical scenes multiple times.
5. Conclusion
Honestly, this game is a mess. The story is considerably worse than in any other FMV game from this publisher. The player agency is decent, but can't save the story. Players who treat the game as a puzzle to see all the scenes might get some enjoyment out of that angle, and perhaps a few people who like silly beat-'em-up movies might even appreciate the story (I can't really tell, because this is really far away from my personal preferences). But if you have other choice-driven FMV games that you haven't played yet, then I would recommend getting these first.