MIO: Memories in Orbit

Better than silksong

MiO has the incredible feeling of coming out after games like Hollow Knight, Silksong, and Ender Lilies, in that it's base control scheme is incredible. The timing of the combo feels natural, and the pace of bosses is punishing if you're greedy, but it's never something that feels like you're missing an ability to interact with combat, or puzzle solving.

TL;DR: MIO starts slowly but grows into a damn good Metroidvania with beautiful hand-drawn visuals, excellent interconnected world design, clever traversal abilities and some surprisingly challenging platforming. Exploration occasionally becomes frustrating when progression is too well hidden, and combat and boss balancing aren't its strongest aspects. 8/10. MIO starts slowly. Movement feels good from the beginning, but the opening hours are fairly simple and the world takes some time to click. Once you get a few abilities and start understanding how everything connects, though, it becomes a damn good Metroidvania. Exploration is easily one of its biggest strengths. New abilities keep opening old areas in different ways, and some of them are genuinely clever rather than just the usual collection of jumps and dashes. The map itself might be my favorite thing about the game. It initially seems relatively small, then keeps growing, connecting and revealing new layers. There was one particular discovery about how the world is structured that completely changed how I understood the map and instantly bumped my opinion of the game up. I won't spoil it because figuring it out myself was one of my favorite moments in the entire playthrough. That freedom occasionally works against it, though. Some paths are very well hidden. I spent over an hour at one point wandering around trying to figure out where I could possibly go next. By the end, I hadn't uncovered 100% of the map or collected every ability, item or piece of lore. I knew there was more out there. I was also completely satisfied with leaving it there. After hours of poking around every suspicious corner, my inner explorer had clocked out. The hand-drawn art style is gorgeous. Each region has enough visual identity that exploring somewhere new remains exciting. The soundtrack didn't leave much of an impression on me, but the sound design is solid. Platforming starts easy and becomes surprisingly demanding later. What I particularly liked is that some of the hardest sequences aren't tucked away as optional challenges. The game actually expects you to master its mechanics to progress. Most of these sections have thoughtfully placed checkpoints and healing spots, so failing usually means quickly trying again rather than repeating five minutes of traversal. There is one particularly long sequence that absolutely does not follow that rule, and having to replay its first half after dying near the end got old very quickly. Combat is fine. Normal enemies are mostly straightforward, although later ones require a bit more thought. Bosses are generally enjoyable and can provide a much bigger challenge, but their difficulty is strangely inconsistent. I spent 20+ attempts on one fight while beating several others without much trouble. In retrospect, I suspect I reached that particular fight earlier than intended. The story grew on me without ever becoming one of the main reasons I was playing. Early on I was curious about what happened to this world but wouldn't have cared much if I never found out. Later areas provide considerably more context, and by the end I genuinely wanted the answers. The conclusion is good, including a nice post-credits scene.

Just intentionally frustrating game design. Beat a boss? Get punished with a jumping puzzle and lose all your cash. Beat an insanely difficult jumping puzzle? Get a useless reward. Almost all modifiers you find are completely useless. Not just situational. No, they are just trash. Find an HP up? Story takes it away right away and you basically always have the starting HP. Travel points are initially deactivated and you have to beat more jumping puzzles to activate them. And even if you activate them, they aren't all connected and you are still forced to walk A LOT. I hope you like walking, because for every boss attempt you will have to walk. No challenge on the way. Just walking to get more play time I guess?! Just beat the bosses first try then. Which is basically impossible with how random the boss attacks are. Basically all boss attacks start with a white flash and then they can either attack you or ninja shuriken around for a minute. There is not much story and not much dialog. But at least the game has good atmosphere. Can't recommend playing this game unless you are into severely punishing platformers with meh controls. My problem with the controls? How about a boss centered around a specific mechanic that just bugs out randomly. And it just gets worse and worse the more you play. Not just the difficulty. That would be fine. But it just gets more annoying. Things that other platformers put in optional endgame areas are everywhere here and mandatory to beat the game. No idea why the review score is so high. Maybe most people only played the first few hours and gave up and thought they just weren't good enough? No, the issue is the game and not the players. It's just frustrating and constantly makes you want to quit.

Mio took me in in a way I never thought it would when I first booted up this game. I did not feel many emotions when I first started this game, but the consistent qualities of MIO made me slowly fall in love as I wandered through this (much vaster than I thought) world. MIO is quite the tricky game, where it hides its full potential under many layers that it does not peel easily. Rather, you have to earn the full complexity of this experience through what I would say is quite easily the most unique world exploration I have played in a metroidvania, perhaps in any game, to date. The combat itself is composed of a lot of moves that flow really well, which are made MUCH deeper with the right mods if you're willing to try out more builds. I wish the game made you use said arsenal more in the game's fights, but what we got was already pretty good and fun. Then there are of course, the game's visuals. When you look at MIO's promotional material you'd go "oh my, that's pretty..." and think that you've seen the best it will offer. What it doesn't tell you though is that the best visuals of this game are far more consistent than you'd think, and far from what is shown at a first glance. I cannot recommend this game enough; as sad as it is that the studio behind it had to shut down due to the game's limited sales, it is a darling indie through and through. It is well worth your time, and will hopefully shock you as much as it did for me.

除了画面，指引、探图和战斗没有一点正反馈，玩了是让人恼火的设计。网上宣传类比奥日、空洞骑士，简直吹牛上天了。就是看网上宣传买的，结果大失所望。

虽然游戏提供辅助模式(boss战每次死亡都会削boss血量 免费的随时间恢复的1格血) 但游戏后期的跳跳乐足以让不开挂的玩家道心破碎 没错 这游戏前中期即便有这样那样的缺点 但都不致命 唯一致命的地方就是游戏后期的干锅区域 你得完成2个极高难度的跳跳乐 从而拿到最后一个能力 之后探索全部地图 打真boss 看真结局 干锅区域的跳跳乐有多难？长时间 超远距离 不落地 不落地意味着不能保存位置 失误1次直接重头开始 我一度怀疑制作组诚心这么设计 后来看到别人评论说制作组解散了 我只想说 活™该 对于你们这群抖S制作者 18层地狱实在是太少了 100！层起步吧