MIO: Memories in Orbit

I'll do my best to be as vague as possible with this review because this game deserves as blind of a playthrough as you can manage. If you don't want to read the unfocused ramblings that are sure to follow this intro, let me just say that this game deserved your attention back when it released. It's already too late for the studio that made it but what they left behind is more than worth your time. Before I start heaping praise, let me frontload some nitpicks to prove that I'm capable of being a fair judge. The start of the game is a little bit of a slog where you ping-pong between two main regions collecting your movement abilities. These abilities are designed for precise aerial maneuvers rather than speed, so if you expect to go faster than a brisk walk you may be disappointed. Also, if you're looking to get to the true ending, you'll bump into a huge and abrupt difficulty spike with the platforming and boss encounters which will catch you off guard if you aren't expecting it. I have faith that you'll be able to handle it, but it's something to be aware of regardless. One more thing to note is that the modifier system is pretty cool (think charms from HK), but one modifier in particular is so strong that I always found myself building around it. In my humble opinion I think it should've just been a default part of the movement upgrade it's associated with, but you get it so quickly that you can just think of it as on by default and you can sacrifice it for other stuff if necessary. As the review title states, MIO is shockingly beautiful. The entire world is rendered with shaders that imitate a hand-drawn feel, and at certain points in the game this rendering is tampered with to great effect. The soundtrack blends moments of atmospheric synth for exploration with upbeat techno for boss encounters, perfectly bouncing between chaos, melancholy, dread, and calm when appropriate. The sound design is an absolute treat, too, but I've drawn out the presentation section of this review long enough so I'll let you hear it for yourself. The gameplay is fairly basic, but fun and challenging at times. Mio starts out with a basic 3-hit attack combo and sticks with it for the whole game unless you choose to equip the OP modifier I mentioned at the start. You're only able to heal at checkpoints, so you WILL die to the bosses a lot until you learn them well enough to survive. Each boss is super well designed and always felt fair to me, and I find myself wishing for some sort of rematch system for some of the more enjoyable ones. The platforming starts out with basic double jumping shenanigans, but this very quickly expands into precision-based gauntlets once you start getting the (kind of unorthodox) movement upgrades. The world of MIO is one of the strongest parts of this game. I find myself comparing it to Bionicle whenever I bring it up in conversation, though it's far from a 1:1 adaptation of that particular setting. Each area of the map has its own uniqur theme, but the more you explore, the more you see that the entire world's design is connected and explained. There's even a point where the cause of one area's degradation turns out to be a boss battle! That's probably all I should say about that, though. You'll just have to see for yourself. Lastly, I want to touch on the story. I really don't want to spoil any of the fantastic writing and characters that you encounter along the way, but you'll quickly see that the world you entered is near its end. It's darkly ironic, really, that the studio behind a beautiful game about holding on too long was shut down far too early. If anyone from the team happens to stumble upon this review, thanks so much for releasing the game. tl;dr go play MIO if you like metroidvanias, bionicle, and/or storytelling that takes itself seriously.