Yaoling: Mythical Journey is a unique take on the monster collecting genre | Early access impressions
In a world where hundreds of games are fighting for your time, I’ve always found it hard to spend my precious hours on early access games. That being said there are certain games that are far too tempting to ignore, and one of those for me was Yaoling: Mythical Journey. An open world monster collecting game with interesting combat and an eastern influence just wasn’t something I could pass up playing, and I’m really glad I didn’t.
As you’d expect from a monster collecting game, Yaoling: Mythical Journey is set in a world full of charming monsters. In this world the Yaoling are loved by the humans who inhabit it, but when these usually calm monsters start to evolve into aggressive new forms someone needs to help save the day. As a young Yaoling Keeper your adventure of taming Yaoling and helping people who need it is just beginning, but maybe you’ll end up playing a bigger part in making this troubled world a better place.
You have many tasks to accomplish as a keeper, but regardless of whether you’re helping a missing chef, or stopping a mysterious group of shady individuals from dodgy dealing, you’ll always have to use your Yaoling in battle to succeed. Unlike most monster collecting games the combat in Yaoling: Mythical Journey isn’t that old fashioned turn-based stuff, it’s an auto battler. Once you place your bunnies and fairies on the battlefield and begin combat they’ll act entirely on their own to take on the enemy, and all you can do is watch and hope you’ve got the right monsters for the job.
In the opening hours this is fairly simple. You’ll want a few melee fighters to get stuck in and take some punishment, and some ranged attackers to pepper the enemy with arrows, rocks or magic fireballs to chip away at their health. Alongside these basic attacks though each Yaoling also has a special ability that they’ll use when their mana meter is full, which often turn the tide of battle entirely. My starter Yaoling would cover a large area in flames that damaged all enemies that were daft enough to get too close, but there are also healing abilities, buffs and all sorts of other powerful options out there to experiment with.
Picking the right posse of monsters for any given situation is how you’ll best succeed in Yaoling: Mythical Journey, but in a pinch you can help them out a little in battle. Powerful seals you find or craft can be equipped and used in battle at any time to hinder the enemy or heal your allies, although you’ll find yourself running out of them if you rely on them too much. It’s nice to be able to step in and help your team if they’re having a tough time though, and if you see a Yaoling you’d like to train up yourself you can even use your seals to catch wild ones.
As fun and unusual as the combat of Yaoling: Mythical Journey is, I don’t think it’s the best part of the game. For me that crown goes to the exploration, which is just so rewarding. The gorgeous and varied environments of the game are stuffed with materials to gather, objectives to find and other keepers to battle, and with so much to do you’re rarely pressured to follow a main quest if there’s other things you’d rather do. Beating all the schools (which are essentially Pokémon Gyms) might be what you care about, or maybe you’d rather try and find new people to live in your village or beat up the evil evolved Yaoling that are causing trouble for the locals. There’s so much to do (even in the early access build) in this monster collecting game, and I couldn’t help but indulge in all of it.
Above all the other tasks I could be doing in Yaoling, the one I would always prioritise was recruiting new villagers to live in my lovely home. Each one of these people you bring back will add something new to the village, which generally provides something helpful for your repertoire. Being given a fishing rod will enable you to find new ingredients and water-based Yaoling to recruit; the chef can teach you to make meals for your party that’ll buff them for a set amount of real world time, and there are even places where you can put your Yaoling to work for a bit of extra cash.
It’s rare to find a monster collecting game that’s as dense with content as Yaoling: Mythical Journey, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. You can craft your own seals with the materials you find to ensure you can use them in battle as much as you want; you can find talent stones to give new passive abilities to your Yaoling making them work together even better, and of course you can evolve your Yaoling into even more powerful beasts. If you’re looking for a deep game to sink your teeth into in this genre then look no further.
You can probably tell I’m smitten with Yaoling: Mythical Journey by now, but it does have a couple of issues. Chief among these is how little you really need to worry about team composition or abilities in the early hours of them game. The difficulty (or lack thereof) means you don’t often need to think when it comes to battling your beasts against others, and alongside everything being automatic it just makes some fights a bit dull. With no way to speed up the scraps, I could imagine some players dropping off, and that’s understandable.
Yaoling: Mythical Journey is a unique take on the monster collecting genre, mainly due to the auto battling combat. It’s no one trick pony though, with a massive world to explore, loads of monsters to collect and so much to do. Yaoling: Mythical Journey is the total package, and even in early access is well worth jumping into.
Yaoling: Mythical Journey is available now via PC early access on Steam.
