Eternal Strands Review

When former video game reviewer, Mike Laidlaw, left Ubisoft Quebec, he went on to form an indie studio called Yellow Brick Games. Around four years later, he and his team announced their first game, that being Eternal Strands. Now, several months after that reveal, the new IP is about to release onto Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC. We’ve spent hours with it, and would like to share our thoughts on one of the first notable releases of 2025.

Combining elements from beloved games like Shadow of the Colossus, Breath of the Wild and Fable, Eternal Strands is an action-RPG with a heavy focus on magic. From the beginning of its campaign, players control a young woman named Brynn. As part of a small group of magic users called Weavers, she and her allies have headed out in search of a long lost civilization called the Enclave, which accepted and included those who wielded magic. Their hope is to discover what happened to their predecessors, what became of their homelands and anything else.

After surviving a dangerous occurrence, Brynn and company stumble across something unexpected. Thus begins a somewhat lengthy campaign in which players must explore and complete objectives within a number of semi-open world maps. The game has you complete runs, for lack of a better term, then return to your group’s camp to drop off resources, upgrade your gear, create new armor and weapons and refresh your health and heat/cold resistance potions. After all, you can only hold so much.

The general gameplay loop found within Eternal Strands involves going to a portal, choosing your destination and then exploring that map. Along the way, you’ll complete quests that are typical of many similar RPGs, defeat challenging enemies, discover hidden items, add to your codex, collect crafting materials and encounter massive beasts. The core combat involves switching between a sword and shield, a bow or slow, two-handed weapons. It’s admittedly a bit basic, but it does the job and can be fun. Be warned that this isn’t a terribly easy game, even on normal, as regular enemies can both pack a punch and take a lot of damage. They come in a few different varieties, too, like wolves, mechanical humanoids and more.

As mentioned above, this game features massive beasts and evokes comparisons to Shadow of the Colossus. That’s because most, if not all, of its semi open world maps feature at least one huge beast to take down. These include giant lizards, incredibly tall robot-like beings and a dragon. The idea here is that you must climb up these ‘bosses’ and attack their armor to reveal weak points. It works quite well, and can give you great bonuses by way of special materials, elemental strands (used to upgrade your magic powers) and achievements/trophies.

Of course, you can also climb buildings, rock faces and more within each environment, similarly to Breath of the Wild and its disappointing sequel. Brynn has a stamina bar, and that also unfortunately factors into encounters with enemies. I’ve never been a big fan of such things when they bleed into general combat. Furthermore, the stamina bar also factors into climbing giant beasts, during which you’ll occasionally be prompted to hold a button to hang on while they try to shake you off.

As a magic user, Brynn also provides us with some interesting advantages in that regard. She can use it to lift and throw environmental items like tree trunks, freeze enemies in place, drop frozen mines and summon explosive fire creatures. You’ll occasionally use physics to your advantage while doing this. The game also boasts impressive fire propagation mechanics, allowing it to spread thrughout grasses, bushes and trees. Meanwhile, you’ll sometimes have to use ice magic to stop things from burning.

Throughout the Eternal Strands campaign, you’ll complete quests as previously mentioned. These include tasks like searching for supply drops, looking for signs of the Enclave, finding codex entries, and collecting materials of which there are many different types. These can be collected from fallen enemies, downed trees, broken rocks and crystals, chests, boxes and more. Since Brynn can only hold so many different materials at once, it’s important to prioritize them by type and rarity. Of course, returning to camp allows you to ‘dump’ or ‘offload’ them, and it’s also possible to donate them to the cause. Doing that gives you points that can be used to upgrade Brynn’s pack capacity, the blacksmith’s capabilities and more. Improving the blacksmith’s abilities then allows you to craft better weapons and armor, or upgrade what you already have, using better materials and discovered recipes.

While at the camp, it’s also possible to sleep in order to change the time of day. That’s because this game keeps track of how many days you’ve spent, and allows for two runs during the daytime and one at night. Sometimes certain flowers will only be available for harvesting at night, or something like that. Meanwhile, you may want to force time to pass in order to avoid bad weather in your chosen destination. You see, the weather changes at random. It may be standard the first time you visit, but it’s also possible for these semi open world maps to be frozen, incredibly hot or covered in clouds of health draining black magic. If you venture out during these conditions, you’ll want to avoid the coldest grounds (else you’ll be hurt and slowed), be careful about using fire during intense heat, and avoid the damaging magic clouds.

As you have likely gleaned, Eternal Strands is a game that tries to do and incorporate a lot of different mechanics. The result is an action-RPG that bites off a lot, and does a lot of things pretty well but does nothing great. It’s a good game, but it lacks depth in its combat, crafting, gear upgrading, quests and the like. As such, there’s quite a bit of room for improvement in a sequel that I would play if it were made.

The same is true of the story, which is fine but unspectacular. Brynn is a rather basic and honestly forgettable main character, but she’s a good vehicle by which to explore, interact with and fight through this dangerous and colourful world. The supporting cast and overarching mysteries are interesting and likeable enough, but the same is true of them. The game also uses still images and dialogue bubbles instead of cutscenes, which honestly feels a bit cheap.

On the presentation side of things, Eternal Strands is hit and miss. It’s less than twenty gigabytes to install, but is relatively big and very colourful. The visuals are pretty detailed and impressive, but the game’s art style isn’t exactly unique. Still, this is a nice looking game that generally performs well on Xbox Series X.

For the most part, the original music is pretty good, and the same is true of the voice acting, though nothing truly stands out as being incredible or memorable. That said, I did encounter a surprising audio glitch. I don’t know  if it was my relatively new headset acting up, or if it was the game itself, but there were moments where the music became very distorted and full of static. The worst of it seemed tied to one boss and its music. When it came close, the audio became a mess. Granted, I’d noticed a bit of static earlier as well.

The headset is wireless, and had just been fully charged for the first time before this happened, so that’s one reason why I don’t think it was the cause. I had worn it upstairs to get a drink, which caused it to go out of range and led to audio distortion. However, that had been 24 or 36 hours prior, and it had been both turned off and charged to 100% in-between.

Overall, Eternal Strands is a good, respectable, enjoyable and engaging first attempt from a ‘new’ indie studio. It could be said that the game was maybe too ambitious for its own good, but the end result remains a positive and above-average experience.

This review is based on the Xbox Series X version of the game, which we were provided with.

Eternal Strands Review
Visuals
79
Audio
70
Gameplay
78
Storyline
70
Reader Rating0 Votes
0
The Good Stuff
Looks good, generally sounds good and runs rather well
A pretty immersive and engaging campaign
An interesting mix of melee, ranged and magic combat
You can climb and take down massive beasts
The Not-So-Good Stuff
Audio bug(s)
Somewhat basic combat
Does a lot, but doesn't do anything incredibly well
74