Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Review — Nintendo’s Switch 2 Exclusive Ditches Platforming Challenge for a Picture-Book Sandbox of Creatures

You never quite know what to expect from Yoshi. Over the years, the little green guy’s adventures have run the gamut, from kid-friendly romps to more in-depth and daunting platformers, and it seems he just can't settle on a visual style — he's drawn with crayons one game, made out of yarn the next. So, the new Nintendo-Switch-2-exclusive Yoshi and the Mysterious Book has understandably generated some curiosity. What can we expect this time around?

Is Yoshi and the Mysterious Book a real page turner? Or will fans find this one hard to swallow? Flutter jump on down for the answer.

The events of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book are set in motion when Bowser Jr. nabs a book from his father's collection as part of one of his nefarious plans, but one thing leads to another, and the book ends up lost on Yoshi's Island. The book, which can talk, sports a pretty mean mustache, and goes by "Mr. E," is discovered by some Yoshis, who are recruited into investigating some of the strange creatures contained within its pages. Ah, but Bowser Jr. is also trapped in the book and searching for something of his own.

Given this is a Yoshi game, the story doesn't matter all that much, but the title’s world and stages are vividly brought to life using a unique picture book style. While this visual motif isn't quite as cohesive as, say, Yoshi's Island or Yoshi’s Woolly World, this is a sharp-looking game, with tons of variation from level to level. The Nintendo Switch 2 handles these Unreal-Engine-5-powered visuals seemingly without breaking a sweat, with no performance hiccups detected during my playthrough. Meanwhile, the game's music won’t stick with you like some past Yoshi soundtracks, but the tunes here are pleasant enough.

If you're hoping for some level of traditional platforming challenge from Yoshi, you need to readjust your expectations a bit, as this isn't really that type of game. Yoshi can't die; he simply bounces off enemies and respawns if he falls into the rare bottomless pit. He can also flutter-jump perpetually. This is really more of a puzzle-platformer, with each of the game's stages focused on a single creature and the many ways you can interact with it and the environment.

Yoshi can interact with the creatures he encounters (which you can name yourself) by swallowing them, jumping on them, flipping them onto his back to be carried around, or, in the case of some particularly large beasties, riding on their backs. Every creature reacts in a different way, with some, like one shaped like a net that lets you nab bugs, or another that looks like an umbrella that allows you to sail on the breeze, taking the form of reusable tools Yoshi can utilize for that stage. Others, like the spore-like creatures that bloom in different ways depending on the surface they land on, can be carried or spread around, but otherwise kind of do their own thing.

In addition to interacting with Yoshi himself, every creature is reactive to the environment and other creatures in numerous, often-unexpected ways. Every time you discover a new interaction, you earn a star, with every level having a larger goal that you eventually have to discover and achieve. It was common for me to finish a stage for the first time, most of which take around 10 to 15 minutes to complete, with over 20 different interactions recorded, and there were always more that I didn’t find.

While Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is easy in the traditional sense, it's not unstimulating, as you will need to engage your brain to find all the game's many, many creature interactions (I currently have over 1000 stars). Every stage also has classic smiley flowers to find, and right from the earliest hours of the game, I found myself regularly completing stages without a full collection of flowers. Some of these buggers are tough to locate.

Surprisingly, as you delve deeper into the game, some more conventional challenge even starts to creep in around the edges. At one point, I was shocked to find myself evading a large blade-wielding baddie in one unexpectedly intense stealth-based stage, and some of the game's bosses are actually quite intimidating. Granted, you still can't really die during any of these encounters, but that doesn't do that much to diminish their impact. You still need to figure out how to sneak through that stealth stage, and you still need to find the right strategy to beat those bosses.

Of course, every stage in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book being based around a completely different mechanic means they're not all created equal. While the majority are quite inventive and engaging, there are occasional stages that feel a bit messy, with too much stuff bouncing around and a lack of clarity about what exactly you're supposed to do. That said, the good stages significantly outnumber the so-so ones.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a game that grows on you, as its early stages are very laid back, perhaps to a fault at times, but everything gradually builds in complexity, eventually arriving at an unexpectedly epic finale that I didn't quite see coming. Also, at around 10 hours just to play through all the game’s main stages, and perhaps another 5 to 10 hours to clean up all the extras and nab every trinket, it’s a surprisingly hefty tome.

This review was based on a copy of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book provided by Nintendo.

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