Eternal Strands Review

Debut outings don’t often do too well, especially at this time when big-ticket titles like Monster Hunter Wilds and Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii are on the horizon. It’s a tough uphill battle, but developer Yellow Brick Games is quite confident in their offering – a curious mix of Monster Hunter, Breath of the Wild, and Shadow of the Colossus. And with that combination, who wouldn’t be?

Yellow Brick Games is a new studio that houses big names like Mike Laidlaw of Dragon Age fame and other industry veterans from Ubisoft and Bioware. It’s no surprise, then, that Eternal Strands combines some of the best aspects of the titles above into one aesthetically pleasing package. While it does well to make itself known, it lacks the oomph to push it even further.

Stay a While and Listen

Eternal Strands follows the story of Brynn, an upstart weaver (essentially a mage) who embarks on a quest to reclaim her people’s homeland. Isolated from the rest of the world following the catastrophic events known as the Surge, Brynn and her companions investigate and uncover clues about the events that led to the present situation.

The story is somewhat predictable and lacks a strong hook to keep players invested. Loreheads, in particular, will enjoy the depth and amount of codex entries in the game that help with worldbuilding. While the story didn’t do too much for me, the characters were quite interesting, to say the least. The narrative is not the game’s main draw, but its fantastic physics-based gameplay and immersive world make every combat encounter a joy.

Fighting Fire With Fire

At the heart of Eternal Strands is Brynn and her powers, which are intriguing from the start. One of her abilities, Weaver’s Grasp, allows her to lift and move objects and creatures. This skill can be used to toss rocks and bombs, interact with the environment, and, when upgraded, lift heavier items.

Another ability, Ice Wall, creates chunks of ice that can form walkways or freeze enemies, providing a tactical advantage. Eternal Strands encourages players to get creative with these abilities, leveraging its physics-based core to find innovative solutions during encounters. While it may not be too apparent at first, things really start to open up as you go further in the game, and you’ll find many useful combinations through sheer experimentation. Exploration and combat aim to use this creativity, offering players the freedom to approach certain situations and circumstances as they see fit.

However, the effects of these powers can sometimes backfire. For example, during one encounter, I threw a bomb at an enemy, only to set the surrounding grasslands on fire, burning myself as I ran out of healing potions. As the game progresses, players unlock additional abilities that challenge them to think strategically about combining these powers for maximum advantage in battle.

Creativity in combat and exploration is the hallmark of Eternal Strands. The game world and its various environments offer ample opportunities for players to experiment with their abilities. Sadly, melee combat feels odd (aiming feels inconsistent) and doesn’t hold enough impact, even when parrying, and the hits do not land strong enough to make it feel generally satisfying. It’s fine, but it could have been so much more, given how combat works in Eternal Strands.

Similarities to Breath of the Wild are evident, with climbing and stamina gauges being notable features. Weather cycles also affect how players approach different situations, drastically changing how they interact with certain surfaces and areas and even what monsters appear during those times. Players will learn that preparation takes precedence when exploring, such as wearing the right armor and equipment, so you’ll need to think before acting. Climbing, in particular, is crucial for taking on colossal foes.

These epic foes in Eternal Strands are massive beings reminiscent of those in Shadow of the Colossus. Each boss has a weak point that players must discover, and Brynn’s abilities are key to solving these puzzles. Whether freezing a limb to the ground to climb it or removing protective plating to expose vulnerabilities, the freedom of approach in combat and exploration is where Eternal Strands truly shine.

Frustratingly, controls can get in the way of general exploration and facing off against these hulking beings. When moving around, you may accidentally climb a nearby tree or cliff instead of the monster itself, which can get really tiring because it happens enough times to notice. Swapping between spells and weapons is unintuitive and could use some improvement to make switching feel and flow better.

Eternal Strands employs a loot system directly tied to upgrades. Instead of experience points, players must defeat monsters and epic foes to collect crafting materials used to upgrade equipment or create new abilities. These materials have varying rarities, sometimes influenced by how the enemy was defeated (e.g., freezing or burning them may yield better loot). The gigantic monsters often hold the best loot, so you can look forward to meeting them again and again.

Eternal Strands PC and Steam Deck Performance

We played Eternal Strands on the PC, and here’s the system we used to play with:

• Ryzen 5 5600x, 16 GB DDR4 3600 RAM, NVIDIA 4070 Super, 1TB NVMe SSD
• Steam Deck OLED

With our PC, Eternal Strands defaults its settings to epic. With DLSS turned on and set to balanced while frame generation is turned off, the game will hover around the 80-100fps mark, which isn’t bad considering that we are already playing at max settings. Tuning down the settings to high will boost frame rates to above 120fps, so that’s another option if you’re willing to sacrifice some visual quality. Even during busy instances, frame rates never dipped too low, and it was a smooth experience overall.

Playing on the Steam Deck, Eternal Strands took some work before we got to play it. During shader compilation, the Steam Deck froze twice and booted us back to the home page. However, once that was done, it was mostly smooth sailing onwards to adventuring in this hand-painted aesthetic world that looks fantastic.

Cutscenes fluctuate the frames dramatically, dipping to as low as 15fps, but Eternal Strands performs reasonably well in-game. The game’s auto-set feature weirdly defaults the graphical settings to high, almost sticking to 30fps with the TDP limit turned off.

Further optimizing the settings, like turning global illumination and shadows to low while keeping models and textures at medium, seems to work the best, as you can play at the 30-40fps range with the TDP limit off. Battery life can be saved further by locking frames to 30fps and turning on the TDP limit anywhere from 10-12, but overall, Eternal Strands is indeed playable on the go.

Verdict: Wait for it…

Eternal Strands is a surprisingly fun and creative experience that encourages players to think and find ways around a situation before engaging. Creativity is greatly rewarded, and players have much to consider before approaching situations. And with a reasonable retail price, it surely is tempting!

Despite the great use of its physics-based systems, combat feels slightly dull and weightless, and controls are somewhat finicky. Switching between weapons and strands is unintuitive and counterproductive to the game’s goal of having players test every skill and how it affects the world around them.

Don’t get me wrong—this is an impressive developer debut. With this amount of creativity, it seems they’ve laid a good foundation for a great next title.

*Eternal Strands was reviewed on a PC/Steam Deck with a review code provided by the publisher.