There’s a lot to be said about the environment in which you engage with a game, something which I’ve touched on in the past. The greatest game in the world can be easily ruined for you should extenuating circumstances make themselves known, preventing you from experiencing it fully. Sometimes it can be simple things like the stress of work, commitments to family or those ongoing struggles rearing it head again that takes something you should enjoy and turns it into something else. I preamble with all of this because, for one reason or another, I feel like I should’ve enjoyed MIO: Memories in Orbit a lot more. But I think my general life circumstances have managed to get in the way and, for better or for worse, I found myself not enjoying some of its core aspects as much as I otherwise would have.
The ship is dying, her heart no longer having the strength to continue on. So we must look to you, little one, to awaken and try to stave off the darkness that we seemed doomed to succumb to. There is only bones left of the vibrant world that the ship once held but her voices are still with us, hiding away in their sanctuaries waiting for the end to come. If you can convince them to join with us then maybe, just maybe, the heart can be reassured that all is not lost. Can you do that for us, little spark?
The heavy cel-shading of MIO is done so well that it feels like it’s all hand drawn. There’s a number of great touches that add to this effect: the slightly wonky bordering on all the edges, the coarse shading to indicate light shadows and the subtle paper texturing on every surface. Given this is a fully 3D game all of this comes to us via clever use of shaders (well, that’s my guess anyway) but it’s done so well that the difference between MIO and the fully hand-drawn games I’ve played in the past is quite slim. MIO’s use of colour is also phenomenal with the game’s hues working in concert with the narrative to set the overall mood of each area perfectly.
I was on the edge of calling MIO the essence game for metroidvania, given that the game’s opening moments focused purely in on the things that make that particular genre great. Playing further though revealed a much larger mechanical depth than I’d first anticipated, so whilst it doesn’t merit that particular title it is a rather well realised game in that genre. All the standard metroidvania affair is there: platforming, movement skills, combat/boss fights that require split second precision and a focus on exploration. There’s a couple progression systems thrown in for good measure, giving you the ability to shape the experience to your liking or, if you’re like me, give you the safety net you need to ease the frustration to more manageable levels. It’s easy to see why MIO has gotten the praise it has; it’s built extremely well.
Platforming feels good, for the most part. You’ll get a feel for how the movement works relatively quickly and the additional abilities you’re granted are usually contextual so you’re not going to end up having to juggle half a dozen different movement abilities to make it through most of the platforming sections. I will say that platforming seems to be at it’s best when it becomes muscle memory (or when you’re simply not paying attention) as there were numerous times when I had an amazing run only to fail to do the same thing again when I tried to repeat it. That probably says more about me than anything else.
However the one thing that irks me about a lot of metroidvanias is how they address increasing the challenge when it comes to platforming: increasing the length. Now long platforming sections can be fun, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a handful of them in MIO, but what broke me was a particular one in the manufacturing area that was well over 5 minutes long with no checkpoints anywhere. After attempting it a good dozen times to only come unstuck at the final point (which, at that point, I could only get 3 tries at) I simply gave up in frustration. It’s sad to have to do that but when you’re simply not having fun anymore I don’t really see the point in continuing.
Combat is mostly OK, even if some of the trash enemies can feel a little bit unforgiving with their timings. Boss fights also feel incredibly unfair when you first get into them, especially when all of them have a second phase that just screams “fuck you player” with some of their tricks, but as always the real boss challenge in these encounters is you. All of the bosses I fought had attack patterns that, once learnt, were predictable enough to avoid them and most of the challenge came from working out the particular gimmick that would rob you of health points if you couldn’t do the required platforming.
MIO’s narrative is one that’s told in fits and starts, giving you small glimpses of the vessel’s past and present whilst leaving it up to you to stitch it all together. Early on this serves you well as it means you’re not wading through walls of text or countless interactions, focusing you in on getting into the game itself. I will say that later on this lack of information does start to hurt a little bit as the drip feed of details never seems to ramp up. This could also be me missing some flavour text here and there as looking at the forums and discussion around it the lore seems to be far more fleshed out than I’d give it credit for. That could also be due to me dropping it early because of my frustration with the platforming too.
Putting this all together MIO: Memories in Orbit sits in that awkward part of my brain where I both appreciate it deeply for what it is but also can’t shake that feeling that I left it on a bad note. The visuals, sound design and mechanics are all implemented well, making for a solid metroidvania if I’ve ever seen one. The extended platforming sections and lack of narrative development had me putting this game down much earlier than I otherwise would have. So whilst I’ll heartily recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good metroidvania it’ll unfortunately be sitting on the shelf for me forever more.
Rating: 8.25/10
MIO: Memories in Orbit is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 1/2 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $31.55. Game was played on the PC with a total of 9.3 hours playtime and 35% of the achievements unlocked. Game is also available on Xbox Gamepass.
