I wish I could give this a neutral review, but I'm forced to lean towards negative. Mio is deeply inspired by Ori, which I adore deeply and have played multiple times each. From a gameplay and design perspective, Mio is excellent. But one core design decision that makes this game unenjoyable for me is the runback, as others have pointed out as well. I really think we're past the early Dark Souls days of where runbacks were considered part of the boss difficulty.

Modern challenging games such as Elden Ring or Khazan have evolved remarkably by keeping the runback very short and instead putting more effort into boss design and difficulty, which rewards experimentation and deep study of the boss mechanics. Mio is the opposite; if forces you into an overly conservative playstyle because in the back of your head you cannot stop thinking about that inevitable runback. It tortures you with it for no good reason; why would you botch this game which such a thing?

Unless the devs address this I'm not returning to Mio. This is a real shame, really...

MIO: Memories in Orbit is nothing short of an amazing Metroidvania--easily in contention to be among the top 10 Metroidvanias I've ever played. MIO knocks so many things out of the park:

• Beautiful, believable, decaying world
  
• Engaging and depressing(non-derogatory) story
  
• Stellar music--Choral and Techno spliced goodness
  
• Interesting, fresh movement mechanics
  
• Masochistic(non-derogatory) platforming
  
• SECRETS upon secrets upon secrets
  
• Very rewarding exploration
  
• Flourishes of detail everywhere that makes MIO feel so immersive
  
  • Dynamic camera perspectives curating the tone of a scene, or showcasing something important
    
  • Nuanced character and environment animations that make sense
    
  • Striking, memorable background art
    
  • Subtle but excellent sound design personality.

The most striking aspect for me was the exploration. Countless times I thought, “Surely I need another ability to get through this…” or “There’s no way I can reach that yet.” Then the penny would drop—sometimes after thinking it through, sometimes much later in a completely different part of the map. You feel like you've been given a new power-up through understanding even though nothing in your aresenal has changed--the hallmark of excellent, excellent metroidvania design!!

The combat is kind of a weak point. There's a fair bit of customisation for your 'build' but it's ultimately a little limited. It's all kind of moot anyway, as MIO is a movement/kinetics game. Despite this, boss fights ARE well designed and very fun, they're more puzzles than actual boss fights. The voice acting (only a handful of scenes) is also a little lame IMO.

I will say that MIO is in the upper echelon of this genre in terms of difficulty. The game can be punishing

• Sparse save points
• Boss runbacks
• Non-recoverable loss of currency on death
• Frustratingly difficult bosses (especially one or two optional/postgame)
• Limited fast travel

but there are assist/accessibility options available. Still, I can see why a lot of people have gripes with it.

Ultimately, MIO: Memories in Orbit is fun as hell and a brilliant display from Douze Dixiemes that they know how to craft an intricate, well-thought-out and stunning metroidvania

Great art style, great music. Very questionable design decisions. Half the time I feel as if I'm fighting the controls and not the enemies.

If the devs are reading through reviews for feedback:

I want to love your game, it has so many great things going for it, but you did not make it *feel* good to play as mio. Half the fun of metroidvanias is the opening up of traversal and the joy of movement. Whats with the unskippable lifts/shuttles. Why do I have to take ages to refill my health or check in at an overseer. Why does my grapple behave very inconsistently. Why did you take the joy of dicovery and exploration away - gathering tons of resources I can never use past a certain point in the game.

If my main issue gets changed in the future, I will leave a positive review but I believe that the devs need to acknowledge this further for any future games, and hopefully some revamp of this one.

The "run backs" in this game are atrocious, and not because they have any sort of challenge. Outside of a few areas, I don't think there is even a challenge to begin with. For example, a boss I'm at right now spawns you at a save point that is about 10 seconds underneath a boss. That sounds fine, maybe too easy even but this whole process takes 50-60 seconds each time you die, and you do almost nothing the entire time.

You can not skip the cutscene, the entirety of your playtime during this is pressing up for a few seconds, climbing a small wall and then pressing interact to watch a cutscene you can not skip. This is most of MIO. The runbacks are not like either of the Hollow Knight games where they at least see how you can challenge yourself to get through it easier, there is almost nothing them except moving forward. They are mostly exercises in annoyance as you wait to play the game again.

There is a section where you're waiting in elevators, and as astonishing as it is on the first take, going up and down them each time is abhorrent, and I really wanted to quit the game rather than sit there and wait. I will say that it really shows you how big the world is, but without going into detail if you're an explorer you're probably going to be pissed off if you want to see how things change. Fast travel is not an option for this. It is as deliberate as all the other time wasters in this game turned up to max.

This is not a good look and it turns a somewhat decent game into a slog at many points, and it gets old very quickly.

The game is pretty good, save for the fact that you PERMANENTLY lose health bar! all your work finding fragments of extra life just to keep loosing THEM at certain points, it sucks to have your work and effort randomly deleted.

An absolutely gorgeous metroidvania with really unique movement mechanics and satisfyingly fun combat. It will offer a fair amount of challenge but nothing that ever feels unfair - it's always easy to understand how you're meant to tackle whatever it's throwing at you. There's also some small accessibility options to make things a little easier, without making it feel *too* easy, for people who like this genre of game but might struggle with the difficult parts.

One of the most beautiful and atmospheric 2D platformers I've ever played. The combat is great and challenging. The music is incredible and immersive. The art brought this world to life. The story is amazing. Absolutely loved this experience. Another solid game to the Metroidvania genre.

There's some cool mechanics and ideas here but the controls just aren't good enough to make a lot of the stuff presented feasible in a fun or motivating way. If you think you want to play this game, you actually want to play Ori (again).

The best metroidvania I didn't finish.

What follows are some disorganized thoughts because I am so done with this game, I'm having trouble finding the willpower to organize them. I have never played a metroidvania that likes to waste time as much as MIO does.

Incredibly uneven game. It starts out with a honeymoon phase, and the more you play, the more its flaws get exposed. By the end of it, I could not be bothered to explore further to find more progression. Every new area I was seeing was less interesting, more boring and more frustrating than the previous. The scale at which the game likes to waste your time is unprecedented, such that it manages to turn ability-gated exploration into a chore.

There's no on-demand healing like similar games in the genre. While this is normally not an issue, there are insanely long runbacks coupled with insanely long platforming challenges.
The game cripples your max HP at some points in the game for narrative reasons. Every time this happens, said platforming challenges become even harder.
There is an exception here in the form of an accessibility toggle you can use (which also comes as a non-stacking mod late-game), which regenerates 1 temporary hit point if you stand still for 5 seconds. This is the first time I’ve used an accessibility option in a game, and its existence is why I didn’t drop the game 10 hours sooner than I already did. I cannot understate how frustrating it is to not only lose max hp, be unable to recover hp on demand with mana or items and having to deal with extensive platforming challenges that involve ridiculous runbacks.
Worth noting that there are points where you can pay money to heal during some of these portions, but their existence is a poor band-aid due to their very infrequent placement.

The amount of backtracking is asinine even compared with the most boring metroidvanias out there. There are checkpoints scattered throughout where you can change your equipment and use the teleport function, however the teleport function is locked behind finding NPCs associated with said checkpoints; these are often tied to further exploration, platforming challenges, even sometimes locked behind movement/exploration abilities. The amount of backtracking needed as a result of the teleport being locked is disgusting. And in the endgame, where you're just looking for ways to progress, there's a lot of trial & error backtracking because it's not really clear what the game wants you to do.

Lastly, there's an optional boss that kills you in two hits no matter how much HP you have. I would say that this is not normally a problem, especially since it's an optional boss, but between a 40-second runback (including an elevator) and a 10-second boss intro animation, if you fail to dodge the first two attacks, your fight effectively lasted 5 seconds and you've learned nothing. The elevator ride time was even reduced in an update, but the time investment required to even attempt the boss, coupled with the potentially zero time you have to fight it, are still ridiculous. Imagine playing Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami with a minute worth of busywork between attempts.
The same boss also has an out of bounds area to which you are regularly flung when hit. This respawns you into a semi-safe area, but the bosses don't care about you or where you are at all, and they just keep doing attack sequences; at least one attack hits the area where you spawn. Meaning you can respawn and then immediately die with no opportunity to react.

The good
- art style is gorgeous
- writing in general, narrative, worldbuilding
- most bosses are quite interesting and well designed
- music and sfx are enjoyable
- combat is simple but feels impactful

The mid:
- controls start out feeling responsive, but the more abilities you unlock and the more complex platforming sequences you have to do, the more it's obvious that the controls are not as precise as they need to be for this game
- the modding system seems extensive but there's not much point to any of the mods, and it's very restrictive due to available mod capacity at any given point
- accessibility options are nice, but they seem implemented largely to offset core design flaws

Very disappointing. Rather good 1/3, even halfway through the game, but stagnates, with questionable design decisions leading to frustration. Plot goes no where interesting, combat remains basic with three hit combo through whole game. No point to modifiers system. Boring side characters. Traversing map tedious, purposely hamstring hair movement when it could just take energy to climb walls instead of all the time. Not enough save points, with pointless backtracking everywhere. No healing mechanic. Float mechanics stupid as a single press drains it entirely. Massive spike in platforming difficulty last third of game despite first half having little to no platforming. Controls not precise or tight enough to justify. Bosses boring, mainly due to boring combat, literally just one attack, not even a charge attack. Little point to unlocking areas because barely to upgrade or gain. Money worthless because all items require cores the game is stingy with. Not even worth getting to begin with.