Eternal Strands Review – Many Strands Make This Game Work

Eternal Strands Review - Many Strands Make This Game Work

When high-profile, ex-Bioware developers depart the beloved studio and form something new, you’d be wise to pay attention. The team is of course known for legendary titles from Mass Effect to Dragon Age, Knights Of The Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate, and much more, and when one of the keys leaves, its worth tracking them and their future endeavours. Mike Laidlaw, the Designer on several Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, departed Bioware to form Yellow Brick Games in 2020, and his team’s debut work, Eternal Strands has arrived. Boasting some gorgeous visuals, but also an intriguing blend of game mechanics, can Yellow Brick Games’ debut title be considered in the same air as Laidlaw’s previous works?

The story of Eternal Strands is a straight forward in many ways, but is delivered in a cumbersome way that can at times make it hard to access. Eternal Strands tells the tale of Brynn and her band of Weavers, as they journey out to to a long-unexplored region of the world in search of answers about a lost civilization known as the Enclave. The region is the traditional home of the Weavers and is filled to the brim with magical creatures, mysteries, and, unfortunately, hostile weather conditions, and a lormant threat that caused this strife in the first place. At a surface level, the plotline is simple enough to understand, and after 10-15 or more hours, everything will really click into place for the player, but Eternal Strands unloads a large chunk of terminology at the player from early on, and without delving into the game’s codex, it can be very hard to track the conversation when a range of unknown terms are being thrown at you. Pair this with some fairly heavy-handed writing that makes absorbing the information a slog at times, and the game’s plot may get relegated to the side-lines because it can be so much to acces. The game also doesn’t help itself at times with the player needing to run from person to person to have multiple conversations, all related to one topic, as opposed to bringing the key players together to engineer a smoother conversation, with less bloat.

Eternal Strands in several respects is a fairly standard action-adventure game, but there are numerous other systems layered atop this to really help the game stand out. Brynn will have three different weapons to utilise in combat, from a sword & shield pairing, to a double-handed weapon, and a bow and arrow, as well as a range of spells connected to three different elements, fire, ice, and telekinetic. The player will travel out from their base to a range of different locations surrounding the area where they will tackle a range of enemies, collect crafting materials, and tackle huge “epic” opponents.

The enormous arks, drakes and wyrms require a totally different approach to combat. Unlike the standard fare where you can slash, shoot, block and parry your way through, these epic foes require you to utlise the game’s climbing mechanics. The player will access to a limited stamina meter to run, jump, and climb, exploying the latter to ascend to teetering heights in some cases to strike at the weak points of the enemy. Brynn will climb and attack weakened parts, as well as execute another range of tactics or manouvres to expose the beast’s “Locus Point”, and once you climb up to that point you can harvest the beast, killing it, but also taking its essence to bolster the strength of your various magical abilities. Some enemies can be a bit difficult to scramble across at times due to their layers of armour or complicated designs meaning that you can sometimes attack yourself to a part of the body that you didn’t want to; couple this with the fact that they’re also trying to grab at you or shake you off, and the task of climbing the beast can at times be mildly irritating. Overall though, this facet is a nice complement and timely change of pace, to the normal combat grind which can get a bit tiresome at times, not because its bad, but because there is a serious lack of enemy variety.’

Similar to the magic elements available to you, the environments themselves can change based on the extreme changes in climate that affect the region. While some of your visits to a location will see you enjoy clear skies, on other ventures you might find that the region is being plagued by searing heat, blizzards, or elevated levels of miasma corrupting the area. To counter this, similar to the you might counteract the elements in a Witcher game, Brynn can consume drop concoctions that will provide a temporary immunity to the extreme heat or cold. Enemies in the region will also change a bit based on the environment, but when tackling these or even the epic creatures, the player can also utilise the extreme weather to their advantage, empowering their spells to do more damage. Perhaps on a scorching hot day you might decide to use your fire magics to light the grass on fire, trapping and killing an enemy, or further exploiting an epic beast’s weakness. There are advantages and disadvantages to almost all of these environmental changes (except the miasma, which just sucks to be around no matter the weather), and it’s just down to the player to adjust accordingly. 

Earlier I mentioned crafting resources, and these are plentiful from each environment, either by destroying enemies, breaking down nature or constructs, and from beating epic enemies. Upon returning to your encampment, Brynn can use these resources to build new weapons and armour, upgrade what she already has, and even swap our materials to reconstruct the gear with different elemental resistances and improved stats. There is a really impressive level of depth available to the player, while still feeling extremely simple to access. You can also speak to you Weaver colleagues to take on Companion Quests or learn more about the world. The number of side-quests are quite limited in a good way, and those that are there, similar to Mass Effect’s loyalty missions, really hone in on the history of the different characters, and provide an excellent opportunity to learn about your party.

Eternal Strands’ presentation is largely one of its great highlights. The environments are all unique within the world, excellently designed, and filled with colour and life. The characters too are bursting with personality both in terms of their writing, but also through their visual design, which is then elevated further by some fantastic voice-acting. The game’s soundtrack is subtle but effective as well, while the sound effect of an epic beast stomping into earshot is guaranteed to get the hairs of your neck standing up in excitement. Where the game is a bit lacking presentationally is in the animation through dialogue, which is almost non existent as characters are illuminated as they speak, to indicate who is speaking for the player, and in its cutscenes which don’t contrast with the game’s standard visuals very well, and would’ve looked much better had they been realised in CG cutscenes, or even in-engine. 

While there are certainly some areas for improvement, there is also so much to like about Eternal Strands. Should the team decide to further pursue works in this franchise, they’ve laid an incredibly engaging gameplay foundation that is only in need of some quality of life improvements in order to elevate to incredible heights. A bit more discipline in the dialogue and exposition realms will tighten up the game in the right ways as well, but for now, its a bit to wade through, and I can easily see players skipping through exchanges to get back to the point. There’s so much to enjoy about Eternal Strands, that makes it a 20-25 hour experience that is well worth checking out.

Eternal Strands Review Box

Eternal Strands was reviewed on PS5 with a code kindly provided by the developer.

Have you seen our Merch Store?

Get 5% off these great Arcade Machines and help support Player 2

Check out our Most Recent Video

Find us on Metacritic

Check out our Most Recent Posts