In the oppening act of the game, we see Bowser Jr who wondered around his father's(Bowser) Castle. He entered an abandoned room with multiple books thrown around and some being piled up. On top of a pile, there was a gigantic Encyclopedia which included a lot of information about unique creatures
found in the wild. In one of the pages there was a weird bird called the Bewilder Bird. Bowser Jr then got his pot, The Koopa Clown Car in hopes of encountering the bird. However once he used the book's monocole, he dissappeared leaving the Clown Car with the book to crash down. The
crash occured in the Yoshi island. Multiple Yoshis saw the crash and rushed to witness the scene. They find the Koopa Clown Car as well as the book which awakened and introduced itself as Mr. Encyclopedia AKA Mr.E.
The Yoshis help the Mr. E to stand up and the book proceeds to ask help from the Yoshis. Inside the book, theres habitant information about different creatures, however Mr.E cannot access the information on hiw own and thats why he requires the help of the Yoshis to find if everything went missing
after his crash. He explains that the Yoshis should use the Monocole to access his pages, however only one Yoshi can join at a time. The Yoshis must collect information about the inhabitants, study them and also name them with the help of Mr.E.
What creatures will the Yoshi meet?
What happened to Bowser Jr?
Find out in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.
Usually platformers do not have deep story telling and the Yoshi games, in fact most of Nintendo's platformers are an embodiment of this statement. For example, on of the earliest Yoshi game, Yoshi island(GBA) the players play as Yoshi who came across baby Mario & Luigi after a stork drop them on their island as a result of Kamek's spell. The player then goes through an x ammount of levels in order to get Mario and Luigi at their place. However, the Mysterious Book took a different approach. The game begins similar to crafted world were Bowser Jr's actions lead to a Sentient item landing in the Yoshi island and requiring the dinos help. The diffrence is, in the mysterious book you go around gainning knowledge by experimenting with every given variable. The narrative is given to the player through some cutscenes and through the dialogue and notes spoken/left by Mr.E.
The aim of the game at the start, is for the Yoshis to help explore the pages of the Encyclopedia. Once the initial cutscene ends Mr.E opens himself and exposes his pages to the Yoshis. Inside the pages we can spot some Fauna and Flora. The player can the Monocole and hover above the pages. If the
monocole hovers above a creature the player can lock on it and choose to proceeds towards exploring the level since the monocole will draw the dinosaur inside its pages. By default, Yoshi plays as any other recent 2D Yoshi game. Yoshi moves towards a direction and will start sprinting if the
direction doesnt change. Yoshi can jump high and if the players continue to hold down the button, Yoshi will be kicking his legs to hover on the air. Additionally, the Yoshi can use his tongue to collect items, stomp down to crush items, use his tail to pick items and even use his eggs to shoot items.
The player should then use all of his abilities to explore and learn about the inhabitants. Everytime an information is gathered, a note will appear in the book. To give you an idea based on the first level and the what was shown in the trailers, the first encounter is with Crayzee Dayzee, a flower looking creature.
By using his tongue, Mr.E notes what Dayzee tastes like. Stomping on it also has its own notes. Additionally using his tail, Dayzee will ride on Yoshi and moving towards certain fences allows the flowers to bloom. Watering them allows them to grow tall, feeding them berries revives where ass red peppers turns them red. Different
colored Dayzees bloom different colored flowers. Each encounter has a big discovery mission which uppon completing will allow you to exit the level. You can exit at any time through the exit menu, but usually completing the big mission si the true end level. Once Yoshi exits the page, Mr.E will not every detailed discovered
by the player and hint about what was missed. For example, showing a dark figures of Yoshi throwing eggs to Dayzee, making the players realize that they could ve thrown an egg to see how Dayzee would react.
Every note rewards the player with Star tokens. The ammount of stars gained, varries based on how difficult it was to make that discovery. For example, using the tongue on a random level is usually a 1 star encounter whilst finding a red Dayzee (in a differnt level not lvl1)and using it to bloom red peppers to then give it
to the new NPC will reward more than one star. Something worth mentionning is new notes on older NPCs can be written down from different levels. For example, even though Croakaoke is on chapter 1, it can be found as NPC in a future level with water elements and will unlock new content based on its encounter with the waters. Aside
from the stars, the player can also collect the typical Smiley flowers. The player can collect them by walking towards them, throwing their eggs on it and even use the NPCs and their abilities to their advantage. For example, drilling the leaves to expose the flower. Collecting Stars and smiley flowers unlock stamps and
decorations that the player can place on the books pages. Additionally, the stars can help unlock chapters from ealy on. For example, if you get a decent ammount in chapter one, you might unlock both chapters 2 and 3 allowing you to choose on which one to move next. Order is not fixed and you can play whichever you want.
Its worth mentionning that this is not your typical Nintendo platformer. The levels are usually smaller and as mentioned dont have a clear goal/finish line. The player should clear the objective to "complete it" and even after completing it, they can choose to stay in and explore or leave at any time. This means that there are levels that
re shorter and levels that re longer. Also every level takes advantage of the NPC and it's ability. For example, theres an NPC who is a fisher and thus all the level is about its fishing ability. Despite that, after Chapter three, you get to unlock more for the past levels. For example, during chapter 3, you can play the level of the
Snurfboard from start to finish. Once you beat the level of Nep-Enut, the level of Snurfboard will have a sticker of NepEnut meanning that NepEnut will appear in that level adding it extra objectives and extra interactions. Each chapter usually consist of 5 new inhabitants and a 6th one which acts as the boss level.
One thing that the game seemss and should be critisize for good or for bad reasons is its No lives system. In this game Yoshi cannot die meanning there isnt any way for the player to lose. To be fair its a game about laying back and exploring but at the same time not having a way to lose has mixed feelings. If Yoshi falls off a cliff or
if he gets stabbed by certain NPCs the book will simply place him at the start of the chapter or to the land prior to its fall. Again not having a sense of danger in the game can be seen as good for young and new comers but can also be seen as something bad for veterans of Nintendo's platformers. The sencond and more crucial thing to comment on is
that the replayability is not here. Uppon re-entering a level, all the notes are already available from before meanning you cant re do them or speedrun levels unless you create a new profile and start from scratch. This also means that if you collected all the items in a level theres no real reason to return to it.
As someone who played lots of Yoshi's island on the Game boy advance i was very excited to play this one. The first thing i noticed was that controlling Yoshi felt much more smoother than Yoshi from Crafted world. The animations were better as well as the responsive of the buttons. The button layer map did change however classic Yoshi fans can find the old button mapping in the menu options. Out of all the Yoshi games out there, this one is the most relaxing experience. There is no baby timers nor objectives to be cleared or hostile NPCs to come after you. You proceed and explore at your own pace and as mentioned theres not a way to get the Game Over screen nor get damaged by enemies. I did enjoy exploring different ways to interact with the NPCs as well as finding ways to use their special abilities. The levels and the worlds were all well designed as well despite being made for that inhabitant. I would ve loved to see a bit more depth, such as using multiple inhabitants in different levels and have some sort of a game Over/ damage system but i do understand what they went for.
Once the players complete the game's main narrative objective and clears all main chaters, there are still they can do aside from the additional plot. As mentioned, habitants from other levels will make their appearance on other habitants levels adding another layer of exploration in past levels. This allows the players to further explore past inhabitants and see their interactions with the other NPCs.
Collecting habitant information is also part of the fully completionist run. Once the game is done, you can go and collect every single note for the inhabitants to have a full 100% complete Encyclopedia. Completing the encyclopedia and collecting all the Discoveries can take time as theres Over 1900 stars in the base game(theres no DLC as of now). The player can spent their token/coins
to get hints as to how and where to find missing discoveries.
Another collectible is the
Smiley Flowers. On the base game theres a total of 260 smiley flowers scattered across the levels and chapters. Unlike games like Sackboi and Smurfs:dreams where all levels have three main orbs, in Yoshi and the mysterious book the quantity of Smiley Flowers differ from level to level. Some may have 3 where
others might have six. Collecting them all will simply unlock more stamps andd stickers to decorate your UI. Similar to the mentioned titles, the positioning of each Smiley flower in the Ui indicates where you should be searching inside the level or if you skipped one by accident.
The music of the game is something i quite enjoyed. Dont get me wrong, as i mentioned in the past, this kind of music is not usually my style but i really liked. In terms of the audio and visual department, the game seemed to followed the Super Mario Bros Wonder approached where the
levels are filled with colors, happe musi and expressive characters.The harmonica and chill music is really good and works for the game. As you know these games do not have any actual spoken dialogue as these Mario characters usually do certain character noices. The in game sound effects are done very well and everything has
certain audio when performing actions. Eg: using the toongue, stomping the ground or hovering.
On the other hand the graphics are very unique, a standard from the series that went form a woolly art style to a fully crafted to a now "hand drawn" aesthetic. The deelopers approach was to ultilize a style that mimics actual books with a mix of pencil colored and water color artstyles. Yoshi himself can be seen having different
expressions(again something that carried over from Wonder). Whether he eats a sweet fruit or a hot pepper his expression shows his emotions. Most of the creatures in the game including Yoshi have a unique Stop motion animation with lower frames. The start and finish of each level also has an amazing detail that shows the color fading
as you apprach the end of the page. Additionally Yoshi, the background and any NPCs will lose their color and look like pencil sketches. Another great visual is how the player can see the profile and notes of each character inside Mr.E.
The players can scan their amiibo to reveive in game bonus. Scanning an amiibo will grant the player with tokens based on a fortune. The ammount varries between 10 to 200. It is important to say that the game only accepts certain amiibos such as:
Overall Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a relxaing platformer suitable to lay back and enjoy what it offers. Narratively, the game's plot takes place inside of a giant book known as Mr.E who was found by Bowser Jr and due to events it landed on the island of Yoshis.
The Yoshis who found it were quick to help to find and collect information about the inhabitants of Mr.E. At the same time Bowser Jr and Kamek are also wondering the lands in search of a Bird that Bowser Jr was attracted to. The narrative gets deeper and darker once the
main objective is complete and the latter chapters are unlocked. It effectively tells a dark apocalyptic story whilst hiding it behind colorful levels and fun gameplay, just like Pokemon Pokopia. Gameplay wise, the game is a fun 2D platformer
where the player controls Yoshi. Each level is built around the chapter's inhabitants and its up to the player to experiment with different ways to interact with them. For example, eating them, attacking them or using them in some way. Each successfull interaction counts as a discovery and
awards star points. Each Level has one major Discovery which also acts as a way to exit the level. You can take your time and enjoy the ride.
Uppon completing the game, the player can further explore the levels in order to discover all the discoveries for each inhabitant. Using your in game tokens can help you with hints as to how to interact with an NPC. Collecting star points is essential to unlock chapters including the latter ones, however the games cost to unlock levels is too generous. Another thing you can do in the
game is to collect all the Smiley flowers found within each level. The smiley flowers can be used to spent to get book decoration for your UI. They dont add anything to the basic gameplay but you do get to have your own custom UI. Visually the game is gorgeous, as it combines hand drawn animations with water colored paints and water color pencils to look like a real book. The characters look
way more expressive and move with deliberate lower frames. Musically the game is chill typical to a Yoshi game. There are some nice references here and there if the player keeps their ears open. The game does support specific amiibo for certain token rewards and other amiibo can be used for a minimun ammount of tokens
One thing noticable is the lack of difficulty in the game. None of the recent Yoshi games has been consider hard but the Mysterious Book made things way to easy by removing both the damage take and the game over features. Its a game where you take your time and do whatever you want without any preassure. Additionally the game had so much potential with its gimmicks but
it never fully ultilize them. Each level is usually built around a certain inhabitant instead of many. I do understand it was based on the concept, but it would ve been crazy if for example i could ve used the fish underwater to get the jelly fish and hover above the ocean to do something. In fact the game sort of gives you something similar in certain levels which if it wasnt for a
mentatory pause every now and then would ve been perfect. Last but not least, i personally do not see Yoshi and the mysterious book having any replayability. With platformers its fun to use power ups and abilities to speed run levels and find a community dedicated with it. With Yoshi the levels objectives are not clear and re entering a level already has the past discoveries noted, meanning the
only way to replay is by starting over a new safe file.
