Metroidvanias are becoming a dime a dozen. It’s a popular genre, and one developers can sink their teeth into to make gameplay its sole focus. Sometimes, little can separate one from the next. Other times, the littlest mechanic can make a world of difference. Mio: Memories in Orbit straddles the line of feeling familiar while doing things differently. The art style is unlike anything I’ve seen, and the punchy controls make travelling around the Vessel so easy and so exciting to the point I just wanted to play more.
At first, Mio: Memories in Orbit felt like so many other titles, but after exploring the world and engaging in combat with the variety of robot enemies, I started to fall in love with it. Taking place on a gigantic space ship known as the Vessel, you must work out why it lies in ruin and what its purpose is. There are giant machines known as Pearls that appear lifeless, but after powering them back up, they start to feed you information about what happened.
You feel pretty powerless at first, but new abilities allow you to get around the Vessel much easier than before. Despite starting off without little more than your own body, there’s one move you have that makes Mio feel different to a lot of Metroidvanias out there. When you perform an aerial attack, you can jump afterwards and keep yourself in the air. By chaining these attacks as well, you can stay off the ground for a while. This helps to avoid dangerous terrain, but also keep the flow of attack feeling fluid and organic.
Mio: Memories in Orbit features a currency known as Dacre. This can be used in a multitude of ways. There are little platforms where it can be spend to regain health. There’s a shop where you can buy various buffs or enhancements. Also, at every save point, you can permanently improve certain skills via modifiers. All these features help to improve Mio and make them a force to be reckoned with when coming face to face with the enemies and bosses you encounter.
The design of these enemies are fantastic. There attack patterns are different, and give you plenty of ways to test out your skills and abilities. There are sluggish robots that swing staffs at you; flying robots that fire projectiles at you; mosquito-like enemies that divebomb you; and more. The Vessel also has different biomes that make it feel different, along with giving you environmental challenges to help mix up traversal, like the ice area where you can slide off platforms if you’re not careful.
What really blew me away was how beautiful Mio: Memories in Orbit is. The level of detail in the backgrounds is insane. Hand-painted environments are filled with incredible architecture and scale, making the world feel real. The colour palette is so diverse, with every area you visit feel so much different than the last. For a development team of less than 15 people, Douze Dixièmes has done an incredible job of making the Vessel feel alive despite the lack of life that resides within it.
When Mio: Memories in Orbit releases, I will 100% be back to explore the Vessel and uncover whatever secrets lie in wait. The gameplay is satisfying and the combat is weighty. Movement is fluid and reactive. While there are plenty of things to discover and things to unlock, it is the art style that makes it standout. I love how gorgeous it looks. Finding new areas and uncovering the mysteries of what happened kept me playing. I can’t imagine what the final game will be like whenever release day comes.
Mio: Memories in Orbit is coming to PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC in 2025.
