Mio: Memories in Orbit

TLDR: This game really surprised me. As someone who really likes metroidvanias, but is incredibly bad at them, this game was a lot of fun. Handling MIO was intuitive, simple and fun. The powerups you install were clear on what they did and had a clear and decisive effect on the gameplay, allowing you to tailor the gameplay to your personal preferences. There is nothing new here really but it is just a good, clean metroidvania.

The game starts with a line drawn outline of your character that is then used through a 2D maze to teach basic mechanics, a theme that is used every time you need to learn a new mechanic (double jump, using your lasso or using objects to refresh your jumps and lasso and so on). After the short tutorial you wake up as your 3D character with no idea what is happening or where you are. As in most metroidvanias you learn by exploration. As you move further you get more information and discover more on the environment. The movement is similar to games like Hollow Knight or Silksong but overall this game is a little bit easier in everything you do. This for me personally was a bigger draw. I am not as spry as I used to be and my reaction times are not as sharp.

The powerups are what you would expect. The first few you get are showing your health, showing the enemies health, add more protective layers to MIO (more health), making the regeneration of health at the health basins free and so on. In order to install these upgrades, you need to increase MIO’s power as each of these powerups has an energy cost. This ensures you can only install a few at a time but also gives you the ability to tailor your gameplay to your personal taste. You can, of course, increase the amount of power and therefore the amount of installed powerups as you go along. Again this is not unique at all but it functions as you would expect. I have only managed to play 8hrs so far but have in that time opened up a lot of the area and fought several bosses.

I doubt I will complete the game as I often find the repetitiveness of these kind of games a little boring after a while to be this games credit I keep finding myself coming back to it. It feels very light and I find I can play this after a long day of work and parenting. It is an easy game to switch on for a few hours and I have to say I always felt like I made progress. It was easy to put down when it was getting a little repetitive and I doubt it will take very long to finish (How Long to Beat says 13.5hrs for the main story and 28hrs for a completionist run).

I played the game on my PC and the ROG Xbox Ally X (including using the Xreal glasses). It ran well on all systems and it was smooth.

I really enjoyed playing what I have so far and imagine I will go back to it a few more times as long as it is installed and I don’t need the extra space (it is only 3.5GB).