Look, I’m a simple man. I see a creature-collecting game I put it on my wishlist. They’re not always good, but they satisfy a specific itch in my brain that must’ve been caused by a childhood shaped by both Pokemon and Digimon. So naturally, as soon as I stumbled upon Yaoling: Mythical Journey, a creature-collecting Eastern fantasy RPG from developer and publisher Rayka Studio, my interest was peaked. Especially because this one sets itself apart from the usual games you may find in the genre in one major way.
But at first, it really does just look like another Pokemon clone. You’re a teenager finally old enough to become a Yaoling Keeper, and so you talk to the Yaoling Master of your village, who lets you choose your starter Yaoling from three possible options. Additionally, you’re tasked with filling out the Yaoling Scroll as you encounter and catch more Yaoling in the name of science. At the same time, demons start attacking people outside your village, and, well, you get the idea—time to save the world. On that journey, you also fight 13 schools to collect some badges and a handful of Demon Lords to stop them from killing innocent people.
What sets it apart from Pokemon and its many clones is the combat. Instead of being turn-based, it’s an auto-battler. You have your team of Yaolings that you can place down on the battlefield and try to strategize through positioning, but once you start the battle, that’s it. Now you’re just watching them duke it out and hoping you’re winning. Auto-battlers aren’t for everyone, but I personally love them for how much focus they put on the planning of encounters rather than the execution during the fight itself.
Now, one problem with this type of combat is that stats inevitably matter a lot. Which means if your game’s difficulty curve isn’t absolutely perfect, you’re going to end up with level grinding sooner or later, and Yaoling: Mythical Journey’s difficulty curve definitely isn’t perfect. For a very long time, I barely had to worry about strategy at all. I figured out some basic combos between my Yaolings and slightly adjusted my team and their positions as I saw fit. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, one Demon Lord just destroyed me. And it took everything—an overhaul of my strategy, grinding levels, and making use of basically every mechanic I could think of—to defeat it. I don’t mind a struggle, but this jump in difficulty was out of nowhere and too drastic of a shift.
I haven’t mentioned the one way that you can impact combat even after it has started yet. Over the course of Yaoling: Mythical Journey, you will collect and craft Charms, which can have all kinds of effects. The first one you will come across allows you to catch Yaolings, but there are also some that heal you during combat, deal elemental damage to an enemy—naturally, this game also has monster types with strengths and weaknesses—spawn a little golem or a spirit bow, lock down an enemy for a few seconds, and more. Charms become very important as you progress through the game since, again, these are the only way you can impact combat once it has started.
Now, at some point, we need to be talking about the Yaolings themselves. The designs didn’t exactly blow me away. Many of them look rather similar, clearly using the same base to work from and then only adjusting things, but they do become, admittedly, a little more varied as the game progresses. I also have to admit that despite their similarities, they all look very charming, and that’s a compliment that really needs to be extended to the entirety of the game. Yaoling: Mythical Journey has adopted the more and more common visual style of using 2D assets within a 3D environment and uses really bright and luscious colors to bring its world inspired by Eastern Asia to life.
While Yaoling: Mythical Journey definitely requires some balancing work, let’s face it many early access titles do, it’s a game with an addicting gameplay loop that works. And despite its at times lackluster monster designs, it creates a beautiful world that’s exciting to explore and engrossing from beginning to end.
Nairon played Yaoling: Mythical Journey in Early Access on PC with a review copy.
