Eternal Strands Review - Second Opinion
Yellow Brick Games’ debut title is a polished action adventure in a fascinating fantasy world.
Eternal Strands. Credit: Yellow Brick Games
I won’t go into depth here, as Andros Craig has already reviewed Eternal Strands here on The Geekly Grind, but I wanted to write a bit about it because I was very impressed with Yellow Brick Games’ debut. They’ve produced an excellent AA game with AAA aspirations that it nearly meets thanks to its polished production quality.
You play as Brynn, a weaver—as those adept in magic are known in this world—who is the newest member of a traveling band of weavers. After a cataclysmic event, the weavers’ city, the Enclave, sealed itself behind a magical barrier, and the weavers who escaped and their descendants became homeless outcasts. Brynn’s band seeks to find a way into the Enclave to discover what caused the disaster. Once they find themselves inside, they are trapped and must find a way to save the Enclave and its survivors from a looming threat.
Eternal Strands. Credit: Yellow Brick Games
The game’s story and dialogue are some of its strongest qualities. The multidimensional characters have well-written, excellently performed dialogue that I rarely found myself skipping. Most story scenes are told through text boxes and voiceovers accompanied by character portraits. The game’s few 2D animated or 3D cutscenes come off as far lower in quality; the 2D animation is just not as attractive in visual design as the game's 3D visuals, and the low framerate makes the 2D feel cheap by comparison. The 3D animated scenes feel sluggish. Thankfully, these are in the minority, and the production quality of the portrait-based dialogue makes up for the lackluster cinematics.
Brynn’s role in her group is a “point,” a scout who explores ahead of the group and scavenges for supplies, so aside from magic, your sword, shield, and bow are your more essential tools as her job lends itself well to action-oriented combat gameplay. Sword combat is simple but feels good, with parry windows that are easy to hit, but it can get a little repetitive due to limited enemy variety. Often, it would be more fun to use magic abilities to throw enemies around; this never got old for me.
Boss fights are more fun. All the bosses are huge, and require Brynn to climb them and avoid getting thrown off, much like Shadow of the Colossus. However, a key difference is that Eternal Strands applies its “climb anything” mechanics, inspired by the most recent Legend of Zelda titles, to the bosses, so you don’t need to look for specific handholds.
In general, traversal feels great. Running, jumping, and climbing feel natural. The most fun way to get around is using telekinetic force to toss yourself quickly through the air, but unfortunately, you don’t gain that ability until late in the game. I understand the design choice, as it makes many of the game’s challenges feel trivial, but it’s too bad that there wasn’t another solution to that issue than gating that ability until the end.
Eternal Strands. Credit: Yellow Brick Games
Eternal Strands has terrific graphics. The slightly cartoonish character designs and painterly textures reminded me a bit of World of Warcraft in a way that didn’t feel derivative. Lighting, fire, and other effects look great and breathe much life into the world. Though they are limited in number, the enemy designs and animations are solid. I had no framerate hangups on my PS5; the game seems well optimized for how great it looks.
According to my save file, I spent around 24 hours with the game to complete just about every side quest it offers. My biggest issue with Eternal Strands is that this involved a lot of repetition—killing multiple bosses repeatedly and running through levels over and over in what amounted to fetch quests or crafting loot grinds. To increase its playtime, the game squeezes all it can out of each level; it goes to show how much fun I had playing that I was willing to dive back into each location so many times and fight the same enemies repeatedly. Even so, I wish that the game featured more environments to explore.
Eternal Strands. Credit: Yellow Brick Games
Eternal Strands is a great game that offers a ton of value for its $40 price point. Its high production quality, engrossing story, and captivating world make me very excited for whatever Yellow Brick Games does next, whether it’s a sequel or something else.
Eternal Strands is available now for PC (Steam / Epic), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: PS5
