Yokai Tales

I beta tested this game so i got my copy for free. Yokai Tales is an enjoyable Turned based JRPG with a battle system similar to SNES classics final fanrasy 4-6 and many other class based JRPGs. Your party is three Tanuki brothers who can shape shift, the story reason for why you use enemy forms. At the start of any run you pick a class for each brother, three at first, with four unlockable classes to round out to seven classes. The player can only use one copy of any class during a run, so this game avoids the "All Tank" loadouts. I'll come back to classes as while they are very important, the reason I can reccomend this game is the Yokai form system. Every non boss enemy can be changed into. The forms have three skills each, and decide your resistances and weaknesses to various elements and afflictions. The game let's you change form for some MP without costing a turn, so if the enemy of a new fight ends up being an element you are weak to, you can change to a different form without giving up turn advantage. You unlock new forms by fighting an enemy for the first time and collecting Yokai Points, which is your overall score of a run. Classes in this game are the first choice a player will make, and the most improtant choice. Each class has a list of learnable skills, and the exclusive Class Strike. Every level up the player earns gives a skill point, which can be also be earned from rare events, which cost either one to three points each. Unlike other skill trees, you only neee one of the connecting skills to gain a higher tier as the player can only gain six skills a run. I highly reccomend a healer at all times until you unlock the Cleric. Now finally onto the roguelite elements, This game has two main modes, the normal story mode and the skirmish mode. Story mode is a set of three biomoes, with each map having set bosses, events, and shops that all grow in power over time. Unlike many games of this type, the map is fully explorable, with the "Void Mist" deleting spaces on the map over time and enemy level increases slowly to keep the challenge interesting. Skirmish mode is a challenge mode, with an unlockable hard mode. This is where you will unlock the new classes, and is a way of farming Yokai points. Each map has the following nodes: Battle, Elite,Boss, Event, Random, Chest, Shop and Shrine. The first three are your combat sqaures, any boss and elite node will give a sigil on clear that is a party wide buff for the rest of the run. Elites are also the strongest Yokai you can collect. Random is any node but bosses. Each combat will give one to three stars for how well the fight goes, these are your currency used during shops and events. Chests randomly give you equipment, potions that are on spot healing or the rare trap. Lastly is the Shrines, a three in one function node. This is your main healing source, and can also reduce either the void mist or enemy level. Keeping in mind how many shrines you have left in any area. I find visual style and music to subjective to really emphasize in reviews. I personally enjoyed the style, but if japanese folklore and music isn't your thing, you may have a less enjoyable time. Ill wrap this up to say that for anyone like me, who has been looking for a fix of the classic JRPG class style play by itself, i cannot recommend this game enough. I do hope the developer adds more in the future, only so this already packed game can be played even longer.

What a fun little game. It’s got a cool concept, transforming costing ever-increasing mana, becoming your foes, juggling type matchups with mana costs. I like being able to go backwards on the map too, and managing the need for experience with the increasing shadow of the map, it adds depth. The art is well-done, if not my preference, and the price is pretty spot on. It’s a great game to keep on your second monitor while in a queue, or killing time in general.

Can you fix more update please 2025-2026

I playtested this game and the few bugs that were found were rapidly fixed, one of the few downsudes is the heavy impact of rng the other one is the lack of explaining how the game work but after a game of 2 you'll know how it works so it isnt that much of a problem

Nice game with lovely artwork. Fans of creature collector games and Roguelite fans will enjoy this!

I'm giving the game a thumbs up as its a one man dev, very cheap, and functionally fine. However, I have a lot of issues. I’ll list my thoughts down below, both positive and negative. + i like that you can go back and forth on the map. + game is visually nice, remind me of early cartoons or flash games, and music is the same +I like the idea of doing well in fights leads to more currency +I like that shrines offer the option to push the void back so you can explore more. It feels like a meaningful choice. -the game’s really easy and i wasn't really engaged with most fights. By the 2nd area I was destroying everything, and when I took a 50% hit to my hp in an event on the final map I didn't really feel it at all. I didnt do the elite of the 3rd area cause i didnt wanna risk getting stunlocked (having done a skirmish on the 3rd map i would have 100% been fine, however) but the boss fight was easy as ♥♥♥♥. really i think the bosses are just kinda bad. they just seem to be aoes, a status effect and not much else. I also recently did a skirmish of the 2nd map and halfway through said skirmish I was almost one shotting most enemies and killed the boss before they could act. While i could just be lucky i dont think thats the case as I didn't come across anything that felt game changing. This might change with hard mode, but idk if it'd necessarily fix the engagement issue. - the implementation of classes and yokai forms feels kinda flawed? From what I saw of the game, yokai forms seemed to be the main way to play, switching through them to deal with enemies. In practice it feels kinda… idk, shallow? And the importance of this varies a lot between classes. Most yokai have a basic elemental attack, an elemental aoe, and an extra skill like a support/status spell. There doesn't feel like much in the way of synergy with yokai forms and there’s no growth, so they feel flat and basic. Depending on the class, the elemental aspect also falls by the wayside. At the start, I shifted a lot to take advantage of elemental attacks, and I still did to an extent for the mage class, but for the others, I tended to just stick with whatever matched the stats best and use class skills. Warrior especially as its physical attacks didn't seem to be affected by elements and quickly thrashed everything in the way. Generally, I feel like the classes overshadow yokai forms a lot. -it feels kinda slow? like my playthrough was an hour but it felt longer than that. im not sure if its a mix of a lot of fights combined with them being not rly engaging that made it feel longer. -the relics are kinda basic. elemental resistance, status immunity, stat boosts and auto buffs. nothing particularly interesting or anything that may change how you approach fights. For example of interesting relics, slay the spire has some such as 10th attack doing double damage, or one giving enemies extra atk in exchange for more ap on the players turn. -i checked game stats and in my 2 hours playtime i've unlocked half of the content doesn't seem good. I imagine the game will get updates but still. In general, I think the game is fine but that’s it. The game’s fights feel shallow and basic, with no major synergies with yokai or classes and most fights are just ‘use elemental attacks and buffs’, with the elemental aspect falling by the wayside depending on your class. I guess this does emulate older jrpgs with their simplistic battle systems, but those games had exploration and story to back them up while this doesn’t. I also think the variance for each run feels very low. The enemy roster is small, your yokai forms are always there, and there isn’t a lot that adds spice to a run that can make it stand out. If you pick warrior, mage, and cleric, the way you play these classes isn't gonna be any different in any playthrough. Again, I think the game is worth picking up if you want some quick fights. It's cheap, looks nice, and isn’t a complete chore to play, but I can't see myself playing for too long.

Yokai Tales is a creative take on a party-based roguelite. While the game advertises playing as Tanuki, they are always transformed into Yokai, one of the spirits you are fighting against. After you unlock a Yokai, you can spend MP to transform into that spirit during combat. You are assigned random unlocked Yokai initially upon starting a run (campaign or skirmish). Transform to gain its stats and elemental advantages! The tutorial is pretty good and gives you enough information to get started. Unfortunately there is A LOT of stuff to understand, which I will get to in a bit. But even though the campaign is really difficult at first, keep trying! Keep going! It will eventually make sense. You need to figure out the strategy before you will be able to beat a run, and that will take about 10 hours, although my notes here will help. The important information that isn't covered in the tutorial: 1. The Yokai you are "using" drastically affects the character's stats in addition to their elemental advantages. You might transform and suddenly have very low strength. There are a lot of stats, so figure out which ones you really need to watch, and check the stats before transforming. 2. How to unlock classes and scenarios. Can't say for sure! I think you unlock most classes by beating the campaign, and unlock new scenarios by beating skirmishes, although I definitely unlocked a class by beating a particular skirmish. New classes are very helpful, but it will take you a while to beat a campaign. 3. Some moves are physical, and others are magical. You need to know which ones are which, because your class and the Yokai stats affect how effective these moves are. For example, your move might deal 1 damage and you have no idea why, since you think your character is very strong. Probably the wrong move type, or your Yokai doesn't enable the right stat for that move. Major positives: 1. The lore is awesome. Really nails the Japanese mythology vibe. 2. The art is awesome. The animation style is cute. 3. The runs are fun and it keeps you engaged as you figure out the right strategy. Areas for improvement: 1. THE MAP. All I would ask here is that the map doesn't snap back to centering my position. I'd like to view what's farther up on the map, but I can't leave it there to examine without holding the drag button. 2. Some of the descriptions of the events are either wrong (mismatched text and effects) or cut off so you can't read them. But it's ok, you can figure it out by trying. 3. Make things more easily distinguishable from each other. For example, there are multiple items you can equip that look extremely similar to each other and you can only tell them apart with the tooltip. Another example would be the icons for the classes. I mixed up Mage and Healer many times! Play around with your party builds, examine stats, learn elemental advantages, and just keep going! The game starts out rather difficult and gets easier and more fun as you learn. Start with skirmishes if you want an easy way to get the hang of it. If you enjoy the challenge of learning the combat system, or if you just want to nerd out on some mythology, I'd definitely recommend this game!