'Eternal Strands' Review, A Magically Delicious Adventure

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

If The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus, a little bit of Monster Hunter, and your favorite survival game had a baby, you would get Eternal Strands. I will explain what exactly I mean by that assessment, and trust me, it’s not a bad thing whatsoever. Yellow Brick Games’ Eternal Strands is one of those titles that checks more than one box regarding what players can expect when they boot up this game.

Eternal Strands Plot

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

Players take on the role of Brynn, a bright-eyed Weaver (someone who uses magic). In most worlds, people like Brynn would be appreciated, hell, even celebrated, because of their abilities. Sadly, in Brynn’s world, that is not the case because magic users are frowned upon because of the Surge, a magical calamity that has befelled Brynn’s universe, making all magic users public enemy number one. After pressing start, a brief prologue explains the story and introduces Brynn and her caravan of interesting companions, who end up in a realm full of mystery. The prologue also explains the origin of the Surge. From there, your quest begins to discover what happened to the original inhabitants, gather resources, and discover clues to unravel the mystery of the Surge while taking out plenty of enemies small and others pretty damn big.

Eternal Strands’ Use of Magic

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

The combat system in Eternal Strands won’t blow your socks off immediately. When you first take control of Brynn, you will experience your typical hack-and-slash combat, using a sword and shield combination, or you can opt for a bow and arrow to keep your distance from enemies. You start cooking once Brynn starts learning new magical abilities called Strands. At the start, your first Strand will allow Brynn to pick up objects and hurl them at enemies. She can also use that ability to pick up smaller foes and toss them at each other. Eventually, you will learn the Ice Wall strand that allows Brynn to make ice barriers to block incoming attacks or freeze enemies in place.

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

Like in any video game that gives you options, not every ability will slap, but when they hit, they hit. For example, later on down the line, when you acquire a magic ability that will allow you to summon a companion made up of fire to help dispatch enemies. I found this ability to be one of the more useful ones. Kinetic Blast is another ability that allows Brynn to call upon a ball of energy that will stick to where you aimed to land and can be detonated, inflicting significant damage. Strands can also be used to do cool effects. For example, if you put an ice wall on the floor and hit it with fire, it will generate steam, allowing you to use it as a smoke screen to escape. It doesn’t take long to unlock spells, but as valuable and powerful as they can be, they can also be deadly to you because they inflict harm on Brynn.

Swordplay Is Decent

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

You can also use resources to craft armor to help deal with the damage particular foes deal or protect you from the elements in the game’s different locations.

Swordplay is respectable and not impressive initially, but it improves once you start locating blueprints to better weapons. Find the correct resources; you can craft weapons like two-handed weapons with elemental effects to help take down enemies quicker or add other nifty effects like using gravity and making foes spin around the air. Some blueprints aren’t worth the trouble finding, but that’s something you experience in every video game. But it’s all a matter of your taste; one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

You can also use resources to craft armor to help deal with the damage particular foes deal or protect you from the elements in the game’s different locations. There is a cool weather feature in Eternal Strands, so the weather situation might differ each time you visit an area, affecting how you approach traveling.

Brynn vs. Goliath

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

What makes Eternal Strands stand out from a game like Shadow of the Colossus’ brilliantly handled man vs. Goliath battles is that the game will make you fight these epic creatures more than once to learn different spells.

The one area where Eternal Strands truly shines is epic battles with the enormous enemies in each area. No encounter with these giant foes is the same, offering a unique challenge during each encounter. What makes Eternal Strands stand out from a game like Shadow of the Colossus’ brilliantly handled man vs. Goliath battles is that the game will make you fight these epic creatures more than once to learn different spells.

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

The first encounter will see you using all your skills to take down a giant automaton or dragon. In contrast, the subsequent encounter will have you trying to complete a set of stipulations to absorb the beast’s energy to level up one of your Strand abilities. It’s a brilliant approach to replayability by Yellow Brick Games to extend your adventure in Eternal Strands a bit longer.

Final Verdict

Source: Yellow Brick Games / Eternal Strands

Eternal Strands isn’t a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination. While it encourages you to explore the worlds you are in, the climb mechanic, which is the same as Breath of the Wild, is severely underutilized. You can climb anything, but rarely are you rewarded for your exploration. The story is serviceable and doesn’t take advantage of the excellent voiceover work. I often found myself speeding through certain parts to get back to gameplay. But the game wins with its fantastic magic system and the different ways it can be used its condensed but breathtaking areas, and its epic battles with the giants on the map. That’s just enough to keep you engaged and adventurous, to learn more about the surge, and to take down a few giants in the process. Eternal Strands is available on Xbox Game Pass, PS5, and PC. If you have time, give it a whirl or add it to your ever-growing backlog to pick up later.

*PS5 review key provided by Yellow Brick Games*