I went into this game expecting a fun chill experience, some puzzles as I learned about the creatures of the Book World and maybe a chance to put in some fun names of my own choosing. I didn’t expect a considerable lore drop for the Mario universe

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a new game for the Switch 2 (not Switch, this wont run on the old ones it’s Switch 2 only) and first entry in the Yoshi’s Island Games for a while (does Crafted World count or is that its own sub franchise?) First surprise I got was the opening cutscene showing Bowser Jr not Baby Bowser (yes they are different) so that means it isn’t set when Mario is a baby, but instead closer to the current Mario chronology. Bowser Jr picks up a large book in his dad’s library one filled with tales of fantastical animals and finds something called the Bewilder Bird but something happens and the book crashes onto Yoshi’s Island with JR nowhere to be found. The book who identifies itself as Mr E is found by a group of Yoshi’s.

The main element of the game is you look through Mr E’s pages and document the creatures within, each level being a habitat for a species and doing certain activities reveals elements of that species. These facts about them come in 3 ranks: 1 star, 2 star, and 3 star. After clearing the main challenge of that habitat you can leave there, be given the option to name the creature yourself, or accept one from Mr E. Then something happens on the World Page allowing you to move onto the next creature. Eventually this leads to a Major creature to document that is basically the Boss of that world. This also advances the plot of the game as Bowser Jr encounters Kamek who doesn’t recognize him but mentions he resembles Bowser who he cares for. Yes the big shock is this game explains how Kamek appears in modern Mario games after his time in the Yoshi Island era! Something I was shocked by.

After clearing the first world you then get access to the other major worlds/biomes and this is where you find out what those star rankings on research you did are for. To unlock each world you need to have a certain amount of stars to do so. Since I had been trying to get everything in each level and made sure to get every creature of the world done, I had enough to skip to some of the later worlds right away. But I didn’t skip to the final world yet as I made sure to clear all the others before getting to it. And then after a final confrontation with Kamek and Bowser jr… I find there’s still over half the game’s story left!?

So anyway, yes it’s still a fun chill game I did enjoy. Some of the challenges were indeed a bit frustrating to work out, but you could use coins to help unlock hints and then use more to make the hints extra clear if you struggle more to figure them out. Also helped that many of the levels’ challenges and creatures are extremely different. One early level has you make music with a bunch of large mouthed things, another later one presents a large amount of surfing related challenges. Some later true post game moments which is when it starts to get Nintendo hard levels create genuine tricky platforming puzzles so you will get a large amount of variety in this game, just not death… with one exception.

Yoshi for the most part controls as he always has in these kinds of games, flutter jump, ground pound eating, and eggs. It’s in his interactions with the different species in the books that the gameplay is shaken up and fortunately I never found a frustration as each worked. I could fail but it never felt like that was because of controls. The only time I got frustrated was one of the post game challenge levels, and when you play it you will see why.

Oh I’m going to say, no I did not name any of the creatures in the book rude or stupid names, I went for fun, maybe Whimsical names. If you find something wrong with naming a species of musical mollusc creatures Doodtoots I look down on your life!

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮