Mysterious Book Lands Yoshi His Best Scores Since 2006

Twenty years is a long drought for any franchise, but Yoshi has been stuck in a weird critical limbo since 2006's Yoshi's Island DS. That streak appears to be over. With 63 reviews counted, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book currently sits at an 80 on Metacritic and an 81 Top Critic average on OpenCritic, with 89% of reviewers recommending it. For a series that's spent two decades being described as "charming but forgettable," I think that qualifies as a comeback.

The scores are all over the place, though. VGC's Andy Robinson gave it a perfect 10, calling it "like a platformer Breath of the Wild" for how open-ended its problem-solving feels. On the other end, IGN's Tom Marks landed on a 6, arguing that the game's best ideas arrive too late and vanish too quickly. In between, you've got Game Informer at 7.75, COGconnected at 9, and CGMagazine at 8.5. The common thread across nearly every review is that Mysterious Book ditches traditional Yoshi platforming in favour of discovery and experimentation. Players explore the pages of a magical encyclopedia called "Mr. E," uncovering new creatures with unique abilities instead of running a standard left-to-right obstacle course. Whether that shift works for you seems to depend entirely on how much you value depth versus novelty.

Developer Good-Feel, whose involvement Nintendo still hasn't officially confirmed despite the game launching tomorrow, previously made Yoshi's Woolly World, Yoshi's Crafted World, and Princess Peach: Showtime. Composer Kumi Tanioka, known for her work on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, shared her involvement with the soundtrack. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book launches as a Switch 2 exclusive on May 21, the first of three Nintendo exclusives arriving this summer before Star Fox in June and Splatoon Raiders in July.