I waited to beat the game before I left a review.

What a great game! If you are a fan of rpgs with lots of choices, then this is your jam!
Suikoden, Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher mixed with some small town management. 300 Different combinations of monsters you can have with you, up to a party of 8 or 9.
You can breed monsters for a chance to get baby monsters with sweet stats.
Game is fairly easy, I think I died 3 times the entire game, 2 were just really bad RNG lol.
Can't wait to see what this game has to offer with future updates and content.

Pros:
Great combat, tons of options to play the way you want to play, great animations, great story, amazing art style. Really inspires you to hunt down every treasure chest and capture every monster. Really leaves you wanting more.

Cons :
Game could use more explanation on which monsters can be evolved into demons. This took me until the end of the game to figure out ( all monsters pre level 30 basically ) There are 2 characters that appear and interact with you... but then their story just.. stops? You never see them again after about 80% into the game. What happened to them? Fishing is just a mess and only really needs to be done at end game, to max out your town buildings.

WISHLIST***
Would love to see an Arena setting, maybe even a new game + would keep this game thriving.
Would love to see a VS mode
Would love for the Demon Teleporters to be automatically marked for me once I have discovered them ( I know, I can do it myself but i didn't )
Would love you to Increase level cap to 999 and just add a leveling modifier to each new game plus. This will def get people to the 100+ hrs mark. I def could play a little more, but at this point there is nothing really to do. I have beat the game, have most of the demon versions of everything offered.
Would LOVE to see more !

Seems like a great concept, but I'm definitely going to wait until they add a difficulty option (or make the game harder in general) and hope they remove the stamina limit for running. That makes absolutely no sense. This isn't an action game, why are you limiting player movement?

Now THIS is a creature collector done right.

With almost 300 Yaolings available on release of the Early Access, I have been absolutely Locked In trying to catch em all in these first 16 hours of playing.

Something important to note is that, despite what some other reviews have been saying about there being "zero difficulty" there are plenty of bosses with (potentially) thought provoking fight mechanics depending on how you play out the game.
Having said that though, not all games need to be difficult. If you're looking for a challenge, then there's always gonna be new ways of immersing yourself in a game to take it on in a more challenging fashion if that's what you're after.

As with most creature collectors, you can pretty easily grind out a ton of levels and get to a point where the difficulty of fights is trivialized, but that absolutely doesn't have to be the case. For example, there are plenty of demons that discourage you from running multiple melee Yaolings due to their close range high damage aoe spells, requiring you to at least put a little bit of thought into who you choose to run.

The combat is a basic auto battler with some opportunity for interaction with the charms, but I haven't really immersed myself too heavily into the world of charms so I can't say they weigh too heavily on my opinion of the game at the moment. There have been instances where throwing in a summoned golem or tossing a heal charm on my frontline has made the difference in a fight though, so they're a good method of keeping players engaged when taking on more difficult enemies in game.

As you progress, you also have the opportunity to recruit multiple NPCs to your village which will grant you access to new features when you return to your home base. There's not too much depth here, but I will say that it's nice to come home and see some of your Yaolings roaming about or tossing around a rice omelette when you drop by the kitchen. If you're stuck in a certain area, there's also plenty of opportunities to power up in your base as well which could arguably be one of the reasons why the game is deemed to be so easy.

At the end of the day, this has been the most fun I've had with an early access game in a very long time! The roadmap looks promising so I'm putting my faith in the devs to follow through. I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of content available on release already though and I'm looking forward to filling up my Yaoling-dex 😎

Highly recommend giving it a chance if you're into creature collectors or just auto battlers in general, as it finds a nice home in both of those gaming niches!

Great art. Huge map. I'm invested with the lore and story. There are shiny variants of different Yaolings. Yeah expect my hours on this game to skyrocket.

Very interesting. Sort of like pokemon auto battler.

Autobattler-Pokemon. Works very well and is super cute :)

ggood👍 👍 👍 👍 thums up

i really like this game so far and can't wait to see the changes made over time. the discord is getting more and more active. i hope to enjoy a lot of time here.

This unique yaoling taming game has a town you help build. earning ways to gather resources, make food that gives you a timed buff, a breeding center and much more. one of my favorite aspects of the town is that the Yaolings you seal (catch) but don't use actively move around town and live in it to show that they aren't just in a pc box somewhere(it wont be all of them and from my experience are randomly chosen). also as you unlock other things for your town like gardening, mining ect. yaolings can be assigned a job and yes each yaoling has a unique stat bar towards what jobs they would be best at, the higher the rating the better the quality of resources they gather/create. i really like this aspect and hope it gets expanded on a bit more.

when it comes to battling we get into strategy placement. the left side being us and the enemies to the right. rectangle grid, place your lings accordingly based on ranged, tanks and healers and go at it. though it never really seems to make a difference once some fights get started but enough of a difference in the boss fights to warrant caution on just tossing them out wherever you want them. i don't mind it but i have only changed my placements 6 times so far to adjust to added slots and how many i can use during different fights. also attack types, element and damage types are in this game as well and for me i don't pay attention to them much as it doesn't seem to have made a big difference for me while playing maybe because i am just throwing things and seeing what sticks. after each battle you can look at stats. damage taken, healed, dealt for each yaoling so you can figure out where you problems may lie. this is a fantastic feature especially for the stat nerds <.<.


the yaolings are pretty neat they they have the usual stats in any tamer game, but they do have attack speed, magic, magic rate, crit, crit chance and percentages.

Each yaoling has one major attack special(that gets stronger as you evolve them) that activates after their magic meter becomes full. they also have room for 4 talent spots and there a lot of talents. before hitting the battle button you can hover every yaoling, including your own or their portrait click and see what talents and special attack they have. giving you an edge on strategy but also which ones to catch. this includes gender which is separated by the yin and yang symbol that appears near their names. another feature i find great considering the number of talents. some talent stones are hard to find so this feature is super ideal.

there are also elite versions of Yaolings that appear bigger/heftier. they have better growth outcome. there are also two different types of rare yaolings. each yaoling has a different variant color version of itself and a shiny version. i have yet to see a shiny off color yaoling combo but i assume they exist. every shiny yaoling has a unique talent attached to them that is random. it will be in a shiny box showing its unique rarity and the letters SE to show its grade. compared to the other (purple, blue, grey) talents it may possess and yes you breeders out there will have fun trying to get the right giant elite shiny, talent build.

the biggest bit here is evolution, the evolution's are fun and obvious as you get up there in levels. there are demon versions of some yaolings final forms. they can't be caught but can be evolved into later on using special items you earn from battles. unique different additions to their special attack and of course jobs/stats.

in my honest opinion i think some of the differences can be quite large and the only option does seem to be demon evolving instead of regular evolving. i understand its an incentive to get unique things but i really think some of the normal Yaolings abilities should be balanced a bit more so it doesn't feel like you are being forced to evolve into
a demon version because its the best option.. both should have some safe feeling of choosing them . unique evolution items are needed for the demons and some can be really rare and will not be dicovered until later so stick to the storyline and you should be fine. evolution is level based. so even if you have the item you will have to wait for them to reach their required level, if you don't have it , i do not know if they do point value scaling if you choose to wait to find the demon item needed. because they can wait to be evolved. its your choice. that being said they do not have a automatic marker or a location for demon monsters. they all spawn in the same spot you found them and you have to mark it yourself on the map so make sure to do this early. i hope this gets updated in the future.

Back to the start: the three starters you can choose from are all decent in their own way so don't worry about taking forever to choose. each starter only has one talent on them and don't worry talents aren't permanent and can be removed/added by finding special stones that have a talent you are looking for. plus a stone that forgets a talent in case you have bad ones or ones that don't fit. they give a tank and healer to you right off to give you an edge on your earlier fights and it shows what talents (max of four) can do with their passive or active abilities. it may seem a little broken getting that much help immediately after starting but it is a great way to learn what those two are capable of given the right talents and stats. they are still apart of my main group going into level 32(the current max level is 70) but you can use a lot of yaolings in battle as you increase your keeper rank which at this moment is a max of 5 rank and i believe up to 9 yaolings and more than that when fighting npc battles.

keeper rank increases how many yaolings you can use in encounters(including demon encounters) and npc battles. among a few other perks. so don't worry if you think you don't have a lot of diversity in your group. it will happen quick. which i like.

i don't usually write up a lot of info reviews due to how long it takes me to do them because of adhd and a thousand spelling/phrasing issues i have. overall i would say Yaolings: Mythical Journey has a fantastic start and has a lot of room for improvement. i think i have comments enabled so please be kind and i am always looking for critique. i want to write better and be better for all my gamers out there. see you around.

One of the best party builders I have played in a long time! There are so many choices for team set up! There is no "best" you can make any combo of Yaolings work. Thre Breeding system is rewarding if you invest time in it. For the low price of this game, you get A LOT to do if you take advantage of all the things to do in game. Character creation is pretty great too!

You can assign Yao’s to work for you while you reap all the rewards – Now I know how Jeff Bezos feels. In all seriousness, this is a creature collector, featuring auto battling, breeding, crafting, fishing and town management.


🟩 Pros:

+ Character customisation
+ Can capture Yao’s outside of combat
+ Fantastic art direction and fluid animations
+ Rich ambience complimented by beautiful music
+ Beautiful day/night cycle coupled with cosy weather effects
+ Team building is dynamic, with large team sizes (up to 9 Yao’s)
+ The world is large, spanning several biomes, filled with a vast variety of Yao’s (300) to collect
+ Town expansion via saving NPCs, with the ability to assign Yao’s work such as cooking or crafting
+ Pick and choose trainer battles, rather than the line-of-sight system most others in the genre follow
+ Fast travel, along with on the go healing and party management via Shrines ensures a steady pace of play with limited backtracking

🟥 Cons:

- Too easy
- Outside of levelling your town, fishing serves no purpose
- Other than one fight, there was a distinct lack of difficulty
- Map is fully revealed from the start, taking away the excitement of exploration

🏷️ Suggestions:

~ Introduce a tutorial explaining you can release Yao’s via the Inn
~ Map opens focused on the characters location opposed to being fully zoomed out
~ Toggle for Yao level during combat, along with an icon to show which Yao has the highest potential GP
~ Yao’s are automatically given nicknames, it would be nice if we could toggle this off as it’s not a value add
~ Shinies don’t have a different colour palette, rather, there are separate ‘rare coloured’ Yao’s, consider combining these
~ I would love to read about Yao’s lore
~ I would also love an online PvP element (or PvE against raid bosses)
~ Battling the Tiger was as challenging as it was engaging, and I would love to see more of this
~ I would love to see additional trainers which use specific compositions and strategies, teaching players different techniques to overcome future challenges (a common RPG trope)
~ I would love for the Rival and other characters to grow and experience their own journey, presently they feel like an addition to simply copy what other titles in the genre have done
~ Yao comparison (side by side values)
~ Drag and drop over existing team members to swap

📝 Notables:

# No end game presently
# Yao’s only have one ability
# It’s a creature collector first, and an auto battler second
# No controller support (Q3 2024)
# Adjustable battle speed (Q3 2024)
# Battle tower / Endgame challenges (Q3 2024)
# Mountable Yao’s (Q4 2024)


Yaoling: Mythical Journey (YMJ) offers a fresh Eastern take on the creature collecting genre, delivering an unexpectedly deep and engaging experience. As a new Yaoling Keeper, you must visit each of the thirteen schools of Yaoling Keepers to unravel the mysterious evil. The story is predictable, however if you’re like me, that’s fine – We’re here to collect all the Yao’s!

I love cats and dogs (Arcanine gang where you at?), but the chonky duckling stole my heart – It’s a chubby ball of sass and I’m all for it. With 300 diverse types, each with their own role to play, there’s surely a Yao for you! Thanks to varying attributes (Yao’s growth potential, like effort values in Pokemon), crafting stats, sizes and strength, along with unique talents, I was always on the hunt for more.

Initially disappointed that Yao’s only had one ability (move), I later understood why this was the case – The focus is on building a diverse team for the situation at hand. To assist, there is a large charm tree which unlocks many craftable items (both offensive and defensive) to use during battle. Finally, there are talents – The key differentiator among Yao’s.


Yao’s gain mana during battle, unleashing their ability once the mana meter fills. What sets Yao’s apart, however, are their talents. They can have up to four talents of differing qualities (blue, purple, gold, or shiny). By shifting the focus away from abilities and toward talents, YMJ emphasises the core elements which make both the creature collector and auto battler genres successful.

Breeding and capturing the perfect team is enjoyable, and coupled with the engaging tactical gameplay, it’s a winning formula. To make things easier, Spirit Gems and Talent Jades (think TMs & HMs) can teach your Yao’s specific talents. Everything comes together seamlessly, adding elements which please both the collector and strategist in me.


With 300 Yao’s and a robust charm tree, the developers have clearly given combat a lot of thought. Unfortunately, YMJ is a simplistic auto battler in its present state, primarily due to the lack of difficulty, but the foundation is there for a deep and engaging system. Regardless of that minor hindrance, the game is brilliant, and I highly recommend it – It can and (looking at the road map) will only be getting better and better.

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