Eternal Strands Review | RPGFan
From Canadian studio Yellow Brick Games, founded by former Dragon Age series lead designer/creative director Mike Laidlaw, comes their debut title Eternal Strands, an “open-zone” action-adventure that sells itself on its blend of dynamic magic and physics systems to create a truly unique gameplay experience, mixing combat and puzzle-solving as you adapt to enemy weaknesses and use your wits to face off against each zone’s epic foe, a colossal beast you must fell and whose magic essence you must then harvest to gain new abilities, similar to Shadow of the Colossus.
Eternal Strands takes place in a world once dominated by magic and wonder, home to all manner of magical creatures and races co-existing, with its nexus the Enclave, a land where magic is woven into every part of society and practicing it inspires reverence and celebration at every turn. That is, until one day when the Enclave unexpectedly sealed itself away from the rest of the world with an impenetrable barrier, warping the world into endless wars and causing magic to become feared by many.
The game’s story picks up decades after, with you playing as Brynn, the newest addition to a ‘Weaverband’ (a clan of powerful magic users) led by Oria, a fierce avian warrior and strategist who seeks to retrieve artifacts from outside the Veil, the great barrier separating the Enclave from the outside world. The band soon find themselves past the Veil and trapped within the Enclave itself. From here, they traverse its beautiful yet treacherous lands, battle ancient beasts, and seek to uncover the mystery of how and why the Enclave sealed itself away before.
As a weaver, Brynn blends powerful magical abilities with a deft mastery of swords and bows, resulting in combat that is equal parts hack-n-slash and magic-based third-person shooter, resulting in a combat system giving plenty of options to dispatch your foes. Do you keep things simple by blocking, parrying, and striking enemies with your sword and board, or do you freeze an enemy and then pick up their frozen body to hurl at other enemies? The choice is yours, and since different enemies have different elemental weaknesses to exploit, you constantly adapt your combat strategies depending on the given encounter.
That all sounds excellent in theory, and in fairness, there certainly are moments (particularly when doing battle with towering bosses) where the individual elements click together and you create an epic battle setpiece moment with Austin Wintory’s score swelling in the background as you exploit your foe’s vulnerabilities. However, for everything Eternal Strands does right, there are numerous things it could do better, and it feels as though the game is constantly getting in its own way.
The combat outside of the magic abilities is not nearly as fun or viable as it should be. There aren’t many melee combos to speak of outside the basic attack, and even then, hacking and slashing in general doesn’t feel sufficiently satisfying. Everything, from basic enemies to crates of resources, takes way too many hits to take down (at least on normal difficulty). I appreciate that magic is the focus, but melee should be an equally feasible option, both on principle and if a player simply prefers prioritizing melee over magic.
Because of this imbalance, most encounters outside of the boss battles become incredibly tedious. By the latter half of the game, when I was sweeping up remaining side quests and upgrades for my gear, I would run past every enemy and straight to the objective. It wasn’t even worth fighting them, even if I had the necessary tools and powers to deal with them by that point.
That said, Eternal Strands does wear its inspirations on its sleeve, and there’s great effort put into making the Shadow of the Colossus-inspired battles against the epic foes the game’s star attraction.
On that front, I am happy to report that Eternal Strands does not disappoint. Much like its inspiration, each boss battle requires a different strategy, whether that’s ridding it of armor plates or a thick bed of scales to expose its weak points, or bringing down an airborne beast to then mount its back and slay it before it throws you off. There are no hints or tips given on how to conquer these beasts initially, so you’re left to devise your own strategy.
This emphasis on player freedom makes all the difference toward making you feel like a worthy warrior of legend when you are victorious after a boss fight, and the game makes a point of telling you that there’s no real right or wrong way to approach it and that there are a number of feasible strategies. Eternal Strands‘ dynamic magic system emphasizes this and ensures that no two battles are the same.
To give a specific example: for bosses covered in fur, you can freeze their legs with your ice magic to trap them in place, then switch to your fire magic and burn off their fur to leave them exposed as you use your kinetic abilities to grab surrounding debris and hurl it at the now-vulnerable hide. It’s all incredibly intuitive and demonstrates a synergy of dynamic magic and boss battle systems at play.
While I have mixed feelings about the story of Eternal Strands itself, the world-building and world-design throughout its narrative are two aspects I cannot fault. The Enclave is a fantastic setting to inhabit and truly embodies a world of technological marvels and magical wonder that has been left behind and is now being reclaimed by nature. The once-bustling streets of the golden capital city of Dynevron now lie empty and eerily silent, and despite how gorgeous it looks up close, it’s unnerving to see evidence of a previously lively market and only happen upon fearsome creatures that now roam the streets in its place.
I can’t say I have a particularly strong opinion of the visuals in one direction or the other. I can see where the complaints online of it looking generic are coming from, but to me, it looks fine. There’s a bit of a disparity between the hand-drawn character portraits during dialogue and the 3D models of said characters, but other than that, it does fit the tone of the game, so it’s not exactly egregious.
Eternal Strands‘ story is your basic fantasy hero’s journey without much that sets it apart from other similar tales. It’s not awful by any stretch, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with using a familiar, tried-and-true structure for your story. However, what defines a good narrative within those structures are the details, particularly the command of character and themes. In that respect, while this title has flashes of intriguing character drama and occasional levity, it’s sadly lacking as a whole.
The story and Brynn’s character arc are both fixed and unchanging, despite dialogue choices requiring player input. Instead, choices alter Brynn’s interpersonal relationships with each member of the Weaverband. While they all tolerate her initially, some are untrusting and reticent at first, requiring nudging to get them to engage in small talk. Throughout the game, these can turn into rivalries, become friendships, or even blossom into something more. While I wasn’t a fan of every character in the Weaverband, I enjoyed being able to define Brynn’s relationship with each of them, which made it more rewarding than if they were already firm friends from the outset.
Brynn herself is a likable enough character. She’s kind and approachable but has a noticeable chip on her shoulder as a direct result of a bad experience with her previous Weaverband, which makes her a lot more measured and steady in a crisis, which especially shows whenever the group gets into a major argument over plot events. She’s a great mediator and well-rounded de-facto leader to her Weaverband, which gradually becomes clear as she steps into the role reluctantly while the band’s founder, Oria, recovers from an injury sustained in the prologue.
Overall, Eternal Strands has some great concepts and cool mechanics to show off throughout its ~20-hour playtime, but other than that, you also have to contend with an inconsistent frame rate on the PS5, which frequently dips below 60 in areas outside of the camp that serves as your main hub between levels. Due to the nature of the game’s dynamic systems and the ever-roaming bosses on each map, I was generally able to forgive this, but that may not be true depending on your own tolerance.
Eternal Strands‘ upgrade system for your gear is also largely uninteresting. Some weapons can unlock elemental special attacks if you invest in them, but otherwise, the upgrades you make to your armor are trivial. You can use certain materials to boost stats like fire and ice resistance if the mission calls for it, but it’s not much of a boon considering you also have access to potions that make you impervious to certain damage types temporarily (that replenish when you return to camp).
When you’re climbing bosses, particularly when they’re moving, and you’re awkwardly trying to navigate their arm as it’s swinging, the camera will occasionally glitch out and have a tough time tracking you. This happens enough that it’s generally better to wait until they stop or try to stop them in their tracks yourself so your climbing experience can be smoother.
There’s also a very odd hitch to character movement where Brynn controls like a bus when she’s sprinting and rounding corners. Movement is serviceable otherwise, but when she has to turn, she suddenly becomes sluggish to control. It’s bizarre.
While it’s still a promising effort by a clearly talented studio, that promise seemingly could take several post-launch patches to show through fully. If you’re at all interested in Eternal Strands, I would personally recommend waiting several months to a year before picking it up. While it is available on Game Pass from release, if you want to enjoy Eternal Strands at its best, you should still wait a bit.
