Despite a promising start, I ended up walking away from Eternal Strands with a complicated cocktail of emotions. Its combat system allows for creative approaches to situations that barely any other game can touch. And while its sights and sounds are charming, outside of its brilliant boss fights it never really got to a point where I was excited to see what was around the next corner. Trying to sum those feelings up is difficult as this is the 3rd time I’m writing this review. Let's give it another go.
Spell Weaver

Source: Yellow Brick Games
You play as Brynn, a weaver who together with her merry band of charming companions wants to explore and uncover the secrets left behind by her ancestors. After a short intro, you are thrown into a very formulaic gameplay loop that has you venture out into rather expansive zones, complete objectives, and return with resources. The best example I could come up with is if you imagine Breath of the Wild's gigantic regions shrunk down to the size of a small rural town. And the comparisons don’t end there, Eternal Strands made interactivity its life mission and offers you an ever-expanding array of spells and weapons to experiment and manipulate your environment with.
This manipulation aspect expands to temperature as well. Generic environmental puzzles like lighting braziers or putting out fires aside, you can freeze or burn enemies. Freezing pieces of armor make it extremely brittle while plants and feathers are easily ignited. Interactivity is the name of the game. No matter where you are or what you’re fighting, you always have options for a creative way to get out of a situation. If you’re a coward and lazy like me, you can freeze a monster to the ground and pepper its head with arrows.
Big fight feel

Source: Yellow Brick Games
The title's main attraction is definitely the big world bosses who roam between the maps which will sometimes cycle through extreme weather conditions. It's here where the combat shines most. Be it a dragon, a gigantic automaton, or an ice snake lizard thing, they are always a treat to go up against. Not only do you have to figure out how to use your ever-expanding arsenal of spells and arms against it you also have to expose their weak points to harvest their abilities. This turns these big fights into more than just draining health bars and instead forces you to find and open these weak spots to earn your spell upgrades. These are great, amazing even, and I wish the rest of the game was more like it.
While upgrading spells has exciting fights tied to it, upgrading your camp and equipment is much less exciting. Most of that happens by finding resources and crafting recipes that are either dropped from enemies and the environment or tucked away off the beaten path. It pales in comparison to how much love the magic got even if the result allows you to customize armor for your specific needs. I understand that this exists to make exploring the big spaces Yellow Brick Games has designed a little more meaningful. But towards the end, I had much more stuff than I knew what to do with and rarely bothered to go for a specific armor spec.
Too much lore, not enough story

Source: Yellow Brick Games
It's similarly disappointing how the game treats your camp and companions. The writing is charming and I love that the story is set in a small part of a much larger world. It constantly alludes to things going on outside the scope of the story which makes the world of Eternal Strands feel alive. It's just that so much of this is cramped into little references and codex entries, rather than being explained by or told through the eyes of our companions. Despite there being a big found family deal going on, your adventure is a lonely one while your friends will occasionally tell you things with a magical telephone. I wished they were a little more involved in your quest, rather than standing around camp barely even interacting with each other. It's clear that the game wants to focus on you, the player more than the characters within its story, but I wished that aspect had been a little more fleshed out. The story itself is functional, fine even, and has its moments but I was never really engaged with it to the point where I was always more looking forward to what giant beast I’d fight next.

Source: Yellow Brick Games
As you can probably tell by this point, I can’t make heads or tails of Eternal Strands. If we talk about polish, art direction, music, and combat I think it is a great title that will entertain for quite some time. But once all was said and done, I struggled to remember anything aside from a few cool combat encounters. The progression system aside from spells is a little uninspired, and the story outside of its charming cast isn’t much to write home about either. If you want to know if this game is for you or not, I highly suggest you give the demo a go. If you like what the game is putting down after completing that, I think you’ll enjoy it. If you don’t, I doubt the rest of the game will make you fall in love with it either. While I’m walking away from Eternal Strands with my hunger sated, I would’ve liked more adventurous appetizers and a dessert alongside the filling main course.
A PC code was provided for the purpose of this review ahead of time by the publisher. Eternal Strands releases on January 28, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Eternal Strands
- Combat invites creativity
- Fully interactive giant bosses
- Beautiful soundtrack by Austin Wintory
- Boring equipment progression
- More lore than story
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Timo Reinecke posted a new article, Eternal Strands review: Magical climb 'em up