MIO: Memories in Orbit Review (PC)

I can’t count the number of times I underestimated MIO: Memories in Orbit. Whether it was the world’s scale, what messages were embedded in it, or what it would take to hear them. Waking in the depths of a dying spaceship, MIO tries to uncover what led to the Vessel’s fall and if there’s a way to save it, along with everyone that depends on it to survive.

Where are we?

Pretty soon after beginning my journey, it was made clear to me that MIO: Memories in Orbit relishes in the obscure. The trickling narrative largely doesn’t make sense until late game, and the environment hides more nooks and crannies than you can squeeze a stick into. There are hidden mechanics in the game that you can only find by experimenting with controls, and a lot of the content can be entirely skipped if you aren’t looking for it.

While this can make the potentiality of discovery exciting, I found it to be quite cumbersome at times. Exploration and platforming are what MIO: Memories in Orbit does best, with the scale and complexity of the Vessel blowing me away time-after-time. It was just unfortunate that this sense of discovery and wonderment was prefaced by at least an hour of mindless wandering. Too often would I hit a wall of progress and be forced to scour every crevice in every room for something I missed.

This is where a comprehensive map and UI would have helped. Much of the minimalist map holds no information outside of vague room shapes and nondescript icons. On some occasions, even that little information is deceptive or simply doesn’t exist. Similar issues live inside the menus, with a confusing slurry of alien icons to parse through, something that grows tiring quickly when adjusting upgrade installations.

For a Better World

Despite all this, anything that exists outside of these screens is a gem. The world that you exist in is beautifully illustrated, accompanied by an ethereal score that I cannot get enough of hearing. MIO’s animations are graceful yet punchy, making her feel deadly. This, juxtaposed against the detailed, static background coupled with the smooth camera work, makes moving around the space satisfying enough on its own. For every aforementioned reason, both positive and negative, I found myself frequently getting lost in MIO’s world.

In such a world of madness, with androids deteriorated to the point of mindless aggression, it’s lucky that MIO is such a capable fighter. With a straightforward moveset, combat feels quite one-note through most of the game. Anything outside of striking hard and fast will net you more hits than your little body can take, even in boss battles.

Ups and Downs

While most boss encounters are adequately designed, they almost all inexplicably start the fight by screaming for 5 seconds straight. During this animation, you are free to wail on them without consequence, bringing their health down a significant amount. Similarly, they all suffer from at least one prolonged attack that has a glaring blindspot, the game practically begging you to slip behind them and deal another third of their health at no risk. These are minor complaints, but it was prevalent enough for a pattern to form and persist through to the final boss.

Platforming holds no such shortcomings, with every stage of the game having tight and challenging level design. The evolution of this design is exquisite, with the suite of abilities that MIO acquires making earlier platforming a breeze while later chapters retain that difficulty and even evolve it. Coupled with the expansive exploration, the movement and level design are the most compelling limbs of MIO: Memories in Orbit.

It’s likely that you’ll have beaten the game before discovering everything in the vessel. I’m still looking for secrets over 35 hours into the game, shoutout to The Crucible! I highly recommend that you push for total completion of this game, it only gets better the more you unlock. Don’t underestimate it!