Yaoling: Mythical Journey

As far as monster taming games go, this one ticks a lot of boxes for me. Autobattlers aren't my preference for RPGs but this one still manages to be compelling because of the min-maxing you can do with each monster. It's got a ton of different monsters to catch and each of them come with a cool unique active ability. Because of how distinct all the active abilities are it's hard to choose who I want on my team. It's the type of game where you'll run into a new monster, check it's active ability and go "huh, interesting". Each monster will also have 1 to 4 random talents, which offer a wide variety of passive effects. Talents do everything from provide basic stat boosts, "on-hit" type effects, trigger "on kill", defensive/offensive buffs, or buff teammembers.... You can use them to round out a monster's weaknesses or build further into it's strengths. On top of that you can also breed your monsters once you unlock the town building required, allowing you to fine-tune the stats of a monster. All of these things together make building a monster pretty interesting. While each monster is generally "suited" to a particular role in battle, you still have multiple options within that niche. If you don't like a monster's ability you can build around auto attacks instead. Conversely you can also build into activating that ability ASAP and trigger other talents off ability use. It's also got two other pretty different game modes that I haven't tried yet. My one gripe is that battles are pretty easy. It would have been nice if you could boost the difficulty right at the start of game if you want.

Exquisite art style, lovely world-building and lovely music and sound effects -- this game could have taken the genre to the next level. However, it's all completely ruined by one of the worst user interface schemes I've ever encountered. Everything is sloppy and half-baked. Nothing is more frustrating than a game with minimal controller support -- either put in the work to make the controller a fully viable option, or just don't bother at all. In Yaoling, you can use the controller to do some things, but not everything you'll need to do while playing. Also, there's no way to remap controller buttons. It really, really sucks. So I switched to mouse and keyboard, but that's almost as bad. You see numbers and names everywhere, but a lot of it lacks the detail you need in order to make decisions. Video games have developed some standard practices in this area, so if you insist on going your own way and creating a setup that greatly differs from what people are used to, you'd better have a very good reason. This game deviates heavily for no apparent reason, and it's maddening. And finally, the localization is riddled with a lot of small errors in grammar and punctuation. This alone would not be enough to make me refund or write a negative review, but it's worth mentioning.

The controls feel pretty janky whether you use a controller or mouse and keyboard. On controllers, navigating menus is especially painful and you cannot change any bindings. I do not know if a mobile version of this game exists, but it feels like it was created for that type of device. You can sprint, but only some of the time because of a stamina bar that serves no other purpose but to annoy you. The localization is mediocre; typos abound and many sentences are strangely phrased. This is not a huge deal, but from experience, issues like this always make me question whether abilities actually work the way they are described, which is a turnoff. All that being said, the main thing that made me ask for a refund is the battle system. I actually quite like auto-battlers in general, but I think it works in other games mainly because while you do not make decisions in combat, you still have a number of decisions to make between most if not all of them regarding resource allocation, team composition, positioning, etc. This is not the case here: you assemble a party and go through battle after battle without a thought. Maybe it gets better later on - my playtime was short - but the lack of quality in other areas of the game gave me very little hope that it would be the case.

Awful controller support, bad localization, and awful/confusing UI make this game very difficult to enjoy. I bought it in early access to support the game, and it feels like there is a lot of potential, but it feels very clunky and like it wasn't ready for a 1.0 launch.

Besides the cute art style this doesn't have much to offer. The controls feel unresponsive, the translation is mediocre and the gameplay is boring. I slapped together a team from mostly starters and cruised through everything until lvl 30 without struggling in a single fight. There is basically no strategy needed in the first few hours.

An okay creature collector held back by horribly dated mechanics and a clear feeling that the developers don't play their own game. Fishing for materials doesn't become easier with better lure, it becomes harder, because the lures simply contain the entirety of the previous tier of material as well as a new tier. You get to pay more for the privilege of getting the same fish you were getting before! Oh but don't worry shiny hunters there are THREE types in this game. Shiny, Recolor, and Elite, and if you want to play on the highest difficulty you need to spend entire hours long periods sitting in camp doing nothing waiting for eggs to hatch into combos of those specific three, because they impact stats in this game! This is all, of course, assuming you don't run into one of the many debilitating bugs that crash or halt your progress. Battles hanging on the complete screen, battles where you can't begin it or leave it, and more! Something for everyone in this almost-great game that definitely should have been in Early Access for longer. Edit: After 90 hours I've completed most everything the game has to offer. This sounds like a lot of time but well over 75% of it was spent sitting in the main camp doing nothing but waiting for various timers to count down so I had enough currency to hatch eggs and wait for more timers to count down. The game feels like it was originally conceived as a mobile game designed to keep you coming back day after day and only about halfway through development did they realize this wasn't going to work. All in all it isn't the worst entry into the genre. It has some major flaws, though, that simply are not small enough that I can recommend the game in its current state.

As a long-time fan of creature collection games and anything inspired by the Pokémon formula, Yaoling: Mythical Journey immediately caught my attention. I'm happy to say it offers a fresh and enjoyable take on the genre. The biggest downside for me, though, was the difficulty — or rather, the complete lack of it. After five hours of play, I never once encountered a challenging fight. Every battle felt one-sided to the point where even with a weak team, victory was guaranteed. This makes building a strong creature team feel a bit pointless, as there's no real challenge to overcome or strategic depth to explore. (UPD: It's got a bit harder past 30 lvl but still crushing everything with starting team without any strategy) One of the game’s biggest strengths is its departure from traditional turn-based battles. Instead, it introduces a unique and well-designed auto-battler system. This change makes the experience feel original rather than a direct clone of existing games, and in my opinion, it works exceptionally well. At first, the visual style felt a bit strange — the camera angle seemed off and took some getting used to. However, after about thirty minutes, I adapted, and the world started to feel immersive and full of charm. The atmosphere is rich, and you can tell the developers put a lot of heart into the game. That said, there are still some rough edges: for example, five characters may share the same hair texture, while a sixth has a completely different one that doesn’t match the game's overall style, which slightly breaks immersion. [b]Final Thoughts:[/b] Yaoling: Mythical Journey shows great promise, especially with its unique combat system and heartfelt presentation. However, the lack of difficulty greatly reduces long-term engagement. With some balance adjustments and polish, it could easily become a standout in the creature collection genre.

Fun. Cute. Don't usually like auto-battlers but this hits all the good notes for me.

Great game really cool monsters and progression systems with a auto battle format for combat.

such a good game. i love just exploring and leveling up or doing quests. the creatures and characters are cute. the battle's aren't too hard if you level up good from the start, but it's progressively getting harder. i would highly recommend it!!

I love the designs of the Yaolings, its pretty fun and I love the teleport system. I have been having a blast playing this game.

A very underrated creature collecting game. I played for about 26 hours the first week it released in EA, and even then it felt really good to play. Like even though it was EA, it ran smoothly and already had a lot of content included. I set it aside until now, and came back to play it in its full release. I wasn't disappointed. They've added quite a bit more content and Yaolings but it still feels true to the game I got a peak of and enjoyed a year ago. STUFF I LIKED: - The battling is really simplistic and smooth, and I like that the Yaolings do most of the work with minimal input from the player. The player can use "charms" to add various effects to the fight but it's a more passive role than what your Yaolings are doing. - I felt like the progress of my Yaoling team ran really parallel to the progress in the world/story. Meaning that I usually felt like my Yaolings were strong enough to keep up with where I was going/what I was battling. It was actually awhile before I started losing, and the losses I was taking were fair (the demons/bosses were too high level, I just had to level up and return shortly after). - While there's a map, a lot of it is very vague. So while you get a general sense of where you are, there's plenty that you have to find and discover for yourself, keeping some mystery. - There's a breeding feature so you can improve the stats of your Yaolings. - There's several rare variations to collect. There's the standard form of the Yaoling, a "shiny"/sparkly version, a large/elite version, and an alternatively colored version. The elite and extra color can also show up in breeding; I haven't bred a shiny yet, so it might be possible, might not be. - Really good music, and the non-words the characters use are actually pretty cute. STUFF I DIDN'T LIKE: - My main complaint is that a lot of the Yaolings start off looking like animals/creatures and then get more humanoid as they evolve; I'd much rather they stay animals/creatures. - Also, in the final stage of evolution, you get two choices (usually) of how to evolve them. It really bugs me that with some choices, their stats actually decline. This makes no sense for an evolution. I've had to choose the other option sometimes to keep the stats from decreasing, even if I like the first option better. - Some of the side quests are poorly explained, or they have no map markers which makes it hard to return to them later.

I love that the battles are fast-paced and not turn-based. I love the designs of the Yaolings. I love the tone, music and sound of the game. There's a lot here to like, and it includes over 400 creatures to collect/raise and discover and you can build tons of useful buildings at your home village! When I bought this recently I hoped it would give me a few hours of distraction and at best I might enjoy it for a brief while. Instead, I'm hooked! Can't wait to dump hundreds of hours into this beautiful, charming game!

if you want a cool game with pretty design, beautiful mons and cool story line, it's game for you of course there is some problems with game since it released recently like menu thing, steamdeck way of playing this game (yes you can play this game on steamdeck, but you need a touchscreen to do some things) but it's not deathly :^)

I am coming back for the 1.0. Game was pretty and fun before. Even though it lacks multiplayer and some kind of tournament modes the game has a lot of depth and is very good. Really wish to give us multiplayer and the game can most likely explode a lot further.

Yaoling: Mythical Journey is the salvation for creature collectors on steam, a true diamond in the rough and a reminder that we shouldn't settle for subpar quality in games. It's filled with endless content, it's smooth and functional, it's cute, fun, interesting to explore... And it has FANTASTIC customization - from rarity you find in-game, to wearable items that actually show up on the team mates. All it's really missing is cross-breeding and tournaments, but you know what? It's not that big of a deal; this is amazing.

It's a solid auto battler creature collector. You roam around, capture different creatures, create a party trying to maximize the dps/buffs/healing/tank. There's normal creatures, Colored variation and Shiny versions. Breeding as well to create your perfect creature. Overall its solid. It got ""easier" compared from previous versions of 1.0, making it easier in a lot of aspects now, but its for the better. The music is quite good, specially the Ice areas :D Edit: they added a difficulty modifier mid game, where u can x2 x3 and x4 increase enemy stats with increased benefits and stats on captured creatures

I love this game. Its breathtaking and full of adorable creatures. I love the story book art style and catching the cute creatures to help save the world from darkness. All of the characters are well written and the clothing and accessories for your own character are super cute. You can add accessories to your creatures to help distinguish them from the enemy creatures which is a lot of fun. I highly recommend this game to anyone that enjoys creature catching games.

The controls—whether using mouse+keyboard or a controller—can feel a little rough at first, especially when moving through menus or selecting battle items, but they become second nature pretty quickly. Overall, this is a charming and truly unique game that absolutely deserves a full playthrough. I’d love to see the small towns, villages, and campsites feel even more alive, with more merchants and interactions to discover. I really enjoyed the experience and am excited to jump back in as new updates and content arrive!

really fun addictive gameplay loop. having a blast swapping between the town management aspects and the monster tamer/battling parts

I enjoyed this a lot; I feel that it captures the feeling of older Pokemon games while also being its own thing. The art style and music are beautiful. The world is massive, somewhat nonlinear and full of hidden areas, and you're given multiple objectives (defeat "gyms", slay demons, rescue artisans for your village) that you can tackle at your leisure. The Yaolings have fun designs and the majority have three-stage evolutions with an alternate "demon" form that has a different playstyle, which allows for a lot of flexibility. This is the first non-Pokemon creature collector I've played where I spent a significant amount of time hunting for alternate color 'mons, as the alt palettes are often super cool and you can easily pick up an increased shiny rate through food buffs. There's also a few immersive quality of life features that I always enjoy in a creature collector: you can choose a Yaoling to follow you in the overworld and some can be ridden for faster travel, and random Yaolings you've caught will hang around in your starting village. And speaking of the village - by rescuing merchants and artisans during the story, you unlock shops and facilities that I felt added a lot of benefit during the game, such as automatically collecting resources and training benched Yaolings. I returned to the village pretty frequently and it felt like a real hub. It's an autobattler which I didn't think I would like, but I ended up really enjoying it. You can intervene during the battle with spells, but the focus is on making sure your team synergizes well when you let them loose. You can assign a wide range of secondary abilities to your Yaolings, so you have a lot of options when teambuilding. Some negative points: the game gets pretty grindy especially towards the endgame if you're not a fan of that. The translation, while serviceable, is a bit spotty in places and can be hard to follow. And, the story is fairly basic and I felt some of the plot points unfolded a bit abruptly, although it didn't really impact my overall engagement with the game. Ultimately, I really enjoyed taking my team of cute critters and eldritch demons all the way to the final boss. I'm really excited for future updates and seeing what comes next.

I wish there was an in between or neutral. I enjoyed what I've played, but... the issue I have is that it seems like the further I go, now seeing most of all of the Yaolings... they don't really look better. Most of the good ones end up being very 'human' and it's weird, I dunno. I guess the designs just aren't really for me.

god i cant wait for it to get sued by nintendo for being better than any pokemon game could ever hope to be

A lot of fun, much to do and a lot of Yaolings!

A really solid creature catcher autobattler.

you can dress the yaoling up and have any of them follow you around the overworld. 10/10.

amazing game love Pokemon so this game hits all the strings for me

Pokemon auto battler that feels feels fun to play!!!

I'm mad I had to scroll that far down "Creature collector" to find this gem. I'm not going to look over the reviews and cross reference, but this is the only auto battler i've ever liked

Like tem tem with easier control

10/10 Better than Pokemon

Good game

nicve game

Fun.

Nice

Fun

cool

GG