Mio: Memories in Orbit (2026)

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.