Mio: Memories in Orbit (2026)

Played and completed the base game of this about a week ago, so some of these thoughts aren't as fresh in my head as I wold like them to be, but just noting them down at this point.

To start, the game is absolutely beautiful, just such a pretty art style throughout. On the style department, I do think the music is pretty lacking compared to the artwork, I don't think anything was actively bad, but nothing very memorable or good either.

My biggest gripe with the game is that I think it fails in a few key aspects. Number 1 and most importantly, the combat feels absolutely terrible. The 3 hit combo that is given and is not iterated on throughout the whole game just feels extremely clunky to use. There is some depth to it with air attacks and using those attacks to stay in the air during fights, but ultimately, the 3 hit combo is what is always around, and it just doesn't feel that good or fun or responsive to use.

When it comes to the fighting, I got infuriated at certain boss fights and that there was some bs, but for the most part, the boss fights are pretty fair and decently engaing. The general enemies throughout the world were definitely boring though, and I'm not sure how I fully feel about no damage from running into enemies, I guess it's probably a good thing, but I am used to other metroidvanias damaging the player when running into an enemy, so it contintually threw me for a loop that this one didn't.

When it comes to combat and exploration, the game is ok. I really did not like how slow everything was and the low amount of fast travel points. The spider ability later on that gives a little extra mobility and parkour capabilities was pretty cool and felt satisfying, but it was always on such a short leash that it never felt truly great. The environements and level design were fine, but I didn't love all the ping ponging between two totally different parts of the map to unlock more areas, sometimes of which I felt was very obtuse, although it could have also just been the pathway I chose that caused that cumbersome stuff to occur. The platforming in general I think is fine, nothing I can really complain about and there were some neat parts.

I ended up not getting the true ending for this game, even though the true final boss looks quite cool, because I simply didn't feel like dealing with all the running back and forth required to get to the end. Story wise, something the true final boss connects to, I really like did not care what was going on, even when trying to engage with the story. I'll probably watch a youtube vid for it at some point.

All in all, this was a fine little game, but not very high for me in the grand scheme of metroidvanias. Light 7/10.

Art Direction and Music are 10/10. I'm going to get this out there before going into anything else. If you like Kid-A and Daft Punk, you will love the soundtrack.

I'm a bit of an old soul when it comes to Metroidvanias, I do not want to be told where to go next, and I do not want my map to autofill everything. I want to take notes and I want to explore. Recent fan favorites in the genre, Ender Lillies/Magnolia and Prince of Persia Lost Crown were very guilty of taking this away from me and making sure I never had to think, explore or get lost (three things I love about Metroidvanias)

MIO is on the other side of that spectrum, even more so than the recent masterpiece Silksong, for the true ending I had to look up a couple of things, because I couldn't figure it out and it's not something I do often when playing Metroidvanias.

The other thing I love in search action platformers is challenging platforming. There aren't that many that really do that well. Aeterna Noctis is the king of the crop on that level. MIO probably has the second toughest set of platform sections in the genre, and I had a great time with them.

I'm mentioning these two things because there are many players who don't like exploring or challenging platforming, and I would not recommend MIO to them at all. It's also worth mentioning that some of the bosses are no picnic either, but are exceptionally well designed and fun if you are up for that.

There is a lot of talk about runbacks being awful in this game. I don't really mind runbacks, although I will admit I did think there were too many in this game, but it didn't really affect my feelings towards it negatively. I saw patch notes for 1.2 version which came out after I had already done the True Ending, and it seems like many of the nitpicks are being addressed.

Overall, this is easily one of the best Metroidvanias I've ever played.

These are the games I consider the very best in the genre, so you can see if your taste align and if you want to give MIO your time:

S-Tier:

1. Hollow Knight: Silksong
2. Aeterna Noctis
3. Hollow Knight
4. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
5. Metroid Prime
6. Astalon: Tears of the Earth
7. MIO: Memories in Orbit
8. Monster Boy & the Cursed Kingdom

P.S. Since Patch 1.2, the true ending has a QR code that directs to a GB MIO game made by the MIO devs that you can play on original hardware! I played it yesteday on my GBC and had a great time!

I don't know exactly why, but this game just does not click for me. I tried to stick through it, and there were some enjoyable moments, but I constantly kept falling back into boredom and disinterest.

There's some glaring reasons, and some others that somewhat elude me. The map is the big one - it steals Hollow Knight's bench mechanic, where the map only updates when you rest at a save point. The save points are sadistically spread far apart - the first 5 hours of the game has you constantly returning to the SAME save point at the beginning of the game. You also can't see your current location or place checkpoints in unmapped areas... so I constantly was just letting myself die so I could see where I am and mark points of interest. A very tedious exploration process.

The other big one is the world and story. Yes the game looks good, has some very flashy and groovy music... but the world is just so boring. I couldn't grasp what the story was or what the environment really represented, the character is just the generic "tiny savior" going around restoring a broken world. You've seen it a million times, but this one, it's vague sci-fi cyborg motifs, is just particularly bland and uninteresting.

The game does pretty much everything else with lots of polish. I already mentioned the art and music, but the gameplay feel and the bosses and the secrets are all done pretty darn well. But it wasn't enough to rectify all of my other issues with it, and I ended up bailing a couple hours before the finale (always a bad sign for me).

3/10, will likely never revisit.

Excellent piece by our Grouvee pal and critic @marioprime that sold me on picking up Mio: Memories in Orbit as my first game of 2026.

Mio: Memories in Orbit nails the art of the Metroidvania

Mio makes its mark with its setting. It’s not just that the 2D landscapes are visually mesmerizing, illustrated in a style that makes every environment look like it was painstakingly penciled in by hand — just one of the many ways that Douze Dixièmes draws a line between the mechanical and the human. The Vessel is an intricately designed series of pathways that connect back to one another with scientific efficiency. Early in my adventure, I’m frustrated when it appears that death sends me back to one single checkpoint in The Spine. (I drop all of my currency when dying, but I don’t have to do a corpse run to retrieve it, and some helpful bots will make anything I’m carrying undroppable free of charge.) The more I explore, I discover unexpected shortcuts that lead my right back to The Spine. The runbacks to distant bosses become shorter as I find new ways to fast-track myself through the ship’s bloodstream.

Despite being a giant machine, the Vessel begins to feel like an organic body the more I explore. It’s a feeling Mio even makes quite literal with the Pearls; each one is named after a different bodily function. The ship has eyes, it breathes, and everything connects back to that central Spine. Each time I unclog an elevator or find the backside of a locked door, it’s like I’m suturing the wounds on a body. I look over the fully discovered map like a surgeon by the end of my adventure, relieved by the sound of stable vitals as my work wraps up.