Even though most Nintendo games are marketed to people of all ages, I have always found Yoshi games, in particular, to be skewed towards a slightly younger demographic. They're usually much simpler than Mario or Zelda games, for example. While that makes them more accessible, I sometimes feel like the ceiling for intrigue gets lower with that accessibility bar. This isn't always bad, far from it, as Yoshi games, just like most other Nintendo properties, have a pretty high standard of quality. However, I feel that Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a perfect example of the pros and cons of a typical Yoshi game experience.

At first glance, there is barely anything about this game that you have not seen from another Yoshi game before. Yoshi still has many standard controls, from eating enemies to turning them into eggs, which can be thrown to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. He has his flutter jump, and he can even pick up a variety of different creatures to ride on his back. Nothing about this game is hard from a platforming perspective, and despite the nice visuals, the actual level design is pretty basic for most of the game's run. The levels are less about getting from one point to another and more about navigating these pocket levels, presented to Yoshi through this mysterious book as a framing device for discoverability. You're navigating these worlds for the sake of gathering information about specific creatures that will present a specific challenge or gimmick. But most of these enemies are just slightly retooled versions of other platforming challenges I have seen before, or are just little aesthetic changes that don't really add much to the overall gaming experience.

Even if the levels present a non-linear idea, they are so short that it almost doesn't matter. You'll explore the level to check off as many things as possible, like how different enemies can be defeated or interact with the environment. But you're still just jumping around on generously placed platforms or defeating obviously placed enemies. Nothing is really pushing you as a player outside of the occasional moment when one task might be unclear. Sometimes you'll need to think outside of the box, given the gimmick or ability presented to you in a level, to figure out how to clear a small area or help an NPC in the background. For example, if one level is about going vertical with bubbles, one challenge might be about making the bubble heavy. That's probably when the game is at its best, and later levels have more of these moments. Still, it takes a while for the game to feel satisfying, especially since not all of these challenges are necessary to progress, so they can just be ignored.

Individual levels are padded with small cutscenes and a storybook framing device, checking off all the tasks you accomplish in each level. It doesn't seem like much, but it makes the game feel much slower than it should when it happens after every single level. Naming the creatures that you end up coming across in each chapter is fun and adds to the “make your own story” element of the game that it's clearly going for. However, considering the levels have very boring layouts, going through a checklist feels more like work than a reward for completing a challenge. At worst, this feels like a standard Yoshi game, with more steps added between the usual stuff to make it feel longer and more engaging than it actually is. At best, this feels like a handheld game, where you complete tasks at your leisure rather than a fully realized console game that you could sit down and spend a couple of hours on in one sitting.

Speaking of the storybook aesthetic, it is undoubtedly the most interesting thing about this game. I was a little worried about the limited frame rate in the actual gameplay levels, but after playing it myself, it's clear this is more of a stylistic choice than a hardware limitation. The fact that Yoshi is so responsive at a limited frame rate does feel very quirky, but in a fun way. The aesthetic of the game is very cute, with splashes of pastel colors, and everything bleeds into each other like you are flipping through the pages of a book. The soundtrack does bring back some familiar leitmotifs from previous Yoshi games, but the individual tracks also fit the game's cozy vibe quite well. I wish the aesthetic played into the level design a bit more, as in previous Yoshi games, but from a visual standpoint, it is quite nice.

I wanted to like this game more. It accomplishes everything it sets out to do, and this is the kind of game I could easily give to my younger cousins or students as their first game. It's visually very cute and an excellent guide through the basics of a platform game. However, if you've already engaged with a lot of platformers and even a lot of other Yoshi games before, I don't think there's much here outside of the setup and presentation. The level design isn't that engaging from a platforming standpoint, the checklist format can feel a bit like work, and the pacing of the game feels too slow for my liking. I would say give this game a shot, but maybe wait for a price drop if it's possible in the future, or get it as a gift for a beginner. It's far from bad, but it's nothing you need to rush to your nearest store to buy right this minute.