MIO: Memories in Orbit PC review — I hope you suffer

Yet another Hollow Knight-inspired game has joined the semi-crowded field, but MIO: Memories in Orbit feels pretty different, all things considered. The game is, weirdly, easier and more difficult than you may think, albeit for reasons you may not be expecting. It’s got an excellent art style, great map design, and a story that really comes together by the time the real credits roll. But it’s also weirdly hostile in some unique ways, to the point that some people are going to want to avoid it once they understand just what they’re in store for.

MIO: Memories in Orbit takes place on The Vessel, a spaceship populated by various robots. The whole thing is falling apart, so you play as the small titular robot who’s been instructed to gather the “voices” of five AI units and reunite them in order to save the ship from certain destruction. There’s more to it than that, of course, but it’s all best experienced in-game. The story, however, takes quite a long time to make sense, as I didn’t quite understand all of it until the final hours. With that said, it’s absolutely a satisfying aspect of the game when all is said and done. It doesn’t hurt that the presentation is gorgeous and the areas themselves are lovingly realised.

The game is mostly a pretty standard Metroid-like. Mio’s health makes use of a health chunk system just like Hollow Knight, and this can be expanded by finding four items. You double jump by default instead of that being one of the game’s unlockable abilities, plus you start with a three-hit combo. Combat feels pretty decent, but it’s quite simple. Wait for an opening, get your three hits in, move out of the way, repeat, etc. In terms of other abilities, they’re mostly pretty standard, but exploration does often feel rewarding, save for the game’s brutal optional platforming challenges that award you with a mod that isn’t even that good.

Mods are equipped into slots that you’ll open up by purchasing or finding new ones, or by using mods that reduce various capabilities in exchange for granting more slots. Most mods simply just aren’t all that useful, plus a great many of them are incredibly difficult to find. I scoured the map and was still missing nearly a quarter of them when all was said and done. Even then, some of them require so many slots that actually being able to equip them can feel like a pipe dream for most of the game’s runtime. The one that makes the game’s healing basins free is incredibly handy, though.

As is standard, enemies drop currency, and you, in turn, drop all your currency upon death. Unlike pretty much every other game that uses this system, though, you cannot pick it back up after dying. There’s a mod that lets you keep some of it later on, but I got used to losing it all. Not that it really matters, seeing as there’s just one shop and the items aren’t all that expensive and, again, there’s a mod that lets you heal for free. Therefore, I completely just stopped caring about it less than halfway through, which makes the entire system feel pointless, but at least it’s easily ignored.

It seems like there’s a reason for some of this early on. When you start MIO: Memories in Orbit, you have no map. You can only get access to it by giving money to an NPC, but this NPC will also be sent any money you lose upon death, which will also stack up until the (relatively small) amount is collected. I assumed this would keep unlocking new things, but it doesn’t. As such, running past enemies becomes an understandable choice with no real consequences. Combat can be challenging, though, but once you get used to the game’s dodge mechanic, it becomes manageable enough. Much like Hollow Knight, your map annoyingly only updates at rest points, which can make exploration more bothersome than it needs to be in spots.

MIO: Memories in Orbit just isn’t really all that challenging for most of the experience. Bosses can take multiple tries, but they’re rarely a problem. Exploration is also fairly breezy, so I felt like I’d settled into a pretty comfortable groove after a while. But then the latter parts of the game happen. One boss in particular, a glorified chase sequence with two separate phases, made me absolutely miserable. The second phase, in particular, has some sections at the end that just don’t feel particularly fair, with the very last section requiring near perfection and ridiculously quick responses. It was so needlessly demanding that I likely would have quit the game had I not been reviewing it.

It’s not that it’s challenging either, it requires memorisation and a bit of luck, considering that the game’s platforming mechanics just aren’t as reliable as they need to be for a game like this. Imagine playing Super Meat Boy if some of Meat Boy’s movesets just didn’t work some of the time. The biggest culprit here is the directional attacks that you’ll need to use to bounce off of things or latch onto others. A huge number of my deaths were simply due to this. There’s maybe one mandatory section before this that I felt was bizarrely punishing, plus two absolutely gruelling platforming sections after this, too. Most of the time, they’re fine, but these three in particular are so much harder than the rest of the game that it isn’t funny.

The last two major boss battles are similarly gruelling due to how much memorising they take, but the aforementioned platforming sequences are so much harder than any other mandatory sections. Some of the optional platforming gauntlets are insanely brutal, too, such as one that had me using my dodge in conjunction with a mod to create shards for me to use for additional platforming. My reward for suffering through this was a mod that doubled enemy damage, alongside a moderate mod slot increase. Completely worthless. As such, I only recommend bothering with these if you’re a completionist and/or a masochist.

This all makes MIO: Memories in Orbit’s difficulty seem horribly inconsistent. If your game is going from comfortable to nightmarish in the blink of an eye like this, something went wrong. And it gets worse with one of the game’s most original, inventive design choices that sadly doesn’t really work here. At a certain point, your health chunks will start getting deleted. This is permanent, and there’s no way to get them back, which is infuriating when you’ve dedicated time to searching for health upgrades or spending your currency on new ones. The game also doesn’t adequately convey what’s happening and why.

The answer is that everything on the ship (including bosses) is also seeing its health deplete, meaning that enemies will all die faster with each health chunk you lose. This is honestly okay, but the game’s brutal platforming doesn’t get easier, so they can be significantly more difficult after losing multiple health chunks, making this choice somewhat insane. This is worsened by how long some of these platforming sections are, although they typically do let you heal at certain intervals.

There’s a mod that lets you take an extra hit if you stand on the ground for a few seconds, or you can just turn this on under accessibility in the menu. I’m not one to use things like this, but I did turn it on to not have to repeatedly start these platforming sections again from the beginning. MIO: Memories in Orbit also has a Symphony of the Night-esque boss fakeout, as the game’s true ending takes a lot more legwork to acquire. Even getting to the new, incredibly tough section to allow for this requires you to solve a surprisingly original puzzle that I actually enjoyed, as it was quite logical and clever. It’s weird that it’s the only actual puzzle in the game, though.

I really like MIO: Memories in Orbit overall, but I’d be lying if I said that some of its choices are about as rough and idiosyncratic as its ridiculous difficulty spikes. It’s enjoyable to explore, the biomes are varied, and it’s generally fun to play when the controls aren’t being pushed past their breaking point by ridiculous platforming sections. However, it’s almost certainly a game I’ll never be playing again due to its frustrations and how underwhelming the signposting can be. I literally didn’t find two large, optional biomes until near the end of the roughly 25-hour game. It’s pretty good, but I’d only recommend diving in if its more painful elements sound good to you.

For more platforming:

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