MIO: Memories in Orbit

Mediocre Title. The Graphics have sold me, and they are pretty good. There are beautiful backgrounds to be found and exploring "the vessel" is the main force that keeps me playing. The Metroidvania skills are interesting: You start with a double-jump, there is no direct dashing without some support target and attacking replenishes the energy for the skills - so keeping yourself in the air makes the platforming interesting and fluid. But new skills are underused in previous areas. There are some places you can get back to, but mostly the world feels linear. Fighting lacks depth and variety. You have one attack you spam in every fight and the rest is dodging/countering. There are no special moves or weapon types. There are "Mods" to find/buy that work like Hollow Knight Charms, but they are default stuff like "See your health" or "See the enemy's health". Or they fill energy faster or give some other small bonus. They aren't interesting and don't have a big impact. When you make story progress, you lose Maximum health every now and then - this basically negates every other health upgrade you find and artificially keeps you weaker. It feels terrible to have half my health bar deactivated all the time. Bosses have too much health / the player does very little damage. Debby sprays water 5 different ways, throws bombs and had me jumping and dodging in that small arena with vanishing floor and spinning knifes on the edges for hours. While I take one sliver of life per hit combo. At least give me access to my whole damn health bar then! The difficulty makes the game feel like a half-baked souls-like. You lose your Resource on death, but you can't get it back - you can crystallize it on some spots, which lets you keep it. Repairing health would cost a bit of the resource, but of course I'm using the only Mod that makes sense: Free health at those repair stations. Currently, I have some super long platforming gauntlet to complete, which stops being fun. Even with an opened shortcut door, the run back + cutscene is annoying. Failing consumes one health point - which doesn't leave many opportunities for trying later parts. Even then, you have to stand on a platform for a second to respawn there after taking a hit - with most of the challenge being about keeping in the air, that is a lot of repeating jumps. There are no interesting decisions to be made here and the challenges feel unfair.

Overall 9.5/10 Story and characters are absolutely beautiful, and on multiple occasions I cried at the melancholy atmosphere. Visual and sound design is on point. The music is very minimalistic in most cases, just enough to give the right emotion without being in the way. There are several bangers on the OST that I've added to my video game music playlist. Exploration is deep and engaging but in most cases not too esoteric for one to at least complete the game without help from a friend or wiki. There are some secrets that I couldn't find without help but I never felt stuck for progression. Gameplay is very strong, but there are a couple small gripes that take away half a point. One complaint I had from the beginning is that Mio's aerial down attack does no damage to enemies. I imagine it was either meant to prevent cheesing or to allow for longer enemy pogos to higher areas, but in my opinion nothing would have been lost by allowing it to damage. The only other con is that there were a few platforming segments that were annoying, such as [spoiler] having to stay airborne while waiting for cycles and fighting enemies at the same time [/spoiler]

wonderful

Great art, great music. Combat is pretty simple, does the job. The plaforming is fun, can feel pretty punishing at times but its never too frustrating repeating sections to overcome them. Really fun exploration and discovery if it sinks its hooks into you.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game. Obviously the presentation is top notch, and exploring in general is lot of fun. Unfortunately the game is completely undermined by one of the worst health management systems I have ever seen. It just infects everything in the game and makes the experience worse than it could have been. Massive, mostly blind platforming gauntlets? Fine if you can scout and heal. (You can't) Lose all your money on death? Fine if you can restore health or backtrack in a reasonable way. (You can't) Somewhat inconsistent controls and attack range? Fine if you have a health buffer to make up for it. (You don't) Stuck on a tough boss or platforming gauntlet? Fine if you can explore and get stronger. (You get weaker) Ultimately I think the game is mostly fun and challenging, but you need an enormous amount of patience. It just didn't have to be that way if the developers had a little more respect for the player.

Excellent game. Fun movement abilities, enjoyable exploration, challenging platforming, superb art and music, rewarding bosses. Combat initially felt a bit shallow but it gets much more interesting as you integrate your hairpin into battle. Boss runbacks were a little long. But not as bad as other people make out. And occasionally what to do next wasn't so obvious so I had to look up some guides. But these are small complaints in an otherwise top tier game Make sure you go for the true ending

playing this game is like playing a super epic movie it's so dramatic and emotional at the same time I love all the different abilities and the way they feel different from any other game and all the bosses were super fun to fight the story is amazing the music is just so perfect I absolutely love this game

Most polished metroidvania of the year. It's engaging, challenging, beautiful and family friendly. The soundtrack is somehow even better and worth the price of the game on it's own. It has everything I like in metroidvanias and, frankly, it makes other higher profile games look not as professional in comparison. Gold standard. top tier. Go for it!