You’ll be hard-pressed to find a game with as many influences and is as honest about them as Eternal Strands. There’s no getting around the fact that the debut video game from Yellow Brick Games mashes up fundamental elements from the most celebrated games of the last 20 years, from Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the Wild to Monster Hunter and Dark Souls, in an alchemic stew that works far better than it should.
Thankfully, to employ a cliché, Eternal Strands is greater than the sum of its parts.
In Eternal Strands, you play as Brynn, a young Weaver who finds herself trapped in a land that’s been sealed away from the rest of the world for decades. Being a Weaver means she has magic powers, which she’ll need to battle monsters large and small as she and her crew of determined companions try to solve the mysteries of the lost civilization.
The game is divided into three basic pillars: completing quests and battling enemies in massive open environments; crafting and upgrading equipment at the base camp with resources you’ve gathered; and visual novel-style storytelling that advances the plot.
I found the story to be generally compelling, if a bit melodramatic. This isn’t a complaint (and it might even convince you to buy the game), but it often felt like I’d been dropped smack into the middle of a “romantasy” novel series along the lines of A Court of Thorns and Roses or Fourth Wing when I was talking to my companions or watching them interact.
Gathering materials, crafting equipment, and upgrading your weapons and armor are engaging as well, but it took me some time to fully wrap my head around the system.
But the game really clicks while exploring the open zones, putting your skills to the test against opponents that require your undivided attention. While you have access to three weapon types (sword and shield, bow, and two-handed sword), your kinetic, frost, and flame powers are what set combat in Eternal Strands apart from other third-person action games.
Weaver’s Grasp, one of the initial kinetic powers Brynn acquires, allows her to grasp and throw objects with her mind. Yes, that includes enemies, which I discovered by chance when I lifted a humanoid enemy in the air and tossed it headlong off a cliff.
The game encourages you to combine these powers as well, which is all but necessary against the Great Foes you’ll face in each zone. These include giant armored robots, drakes, and wyrms that may even give Paul Atreides pause. As they fly across the map, swing at you with enormous weapons, and charge at you at full speed, fire and ice are your best friends. You can freeze them in place, burn their weak spots, and even build an ice bridge to get the drop on them from above. The more creative you are with your powers, the less imposing the bosses will become.
The physics in Eternal Strands gives you an almost overwhelming amount of control over these powers. It also means that you are occasionally going to go flying three and a half miles into the air or get stuck inside a wall because you used your ice wall just as a giant’s arm came crashing down on top of you. The jank is unavoidable and led to more than a few frustrating failures in my time with the game, but I think the pros ended up outweighing the cons. I’d rather the game give me that freedom than sand off all the rough edges.
Speaking of freedom, you can climb on nearly every surface in the game, similar to the last two Legend of Zelda games. This makes the maps feel bigger than they are, though you’re going to run into an invisible wall or two on your journey.
That leads me to the point I made earlier about the game’s many influences—the developers at Yellow Brick Games aren’t shy about the games they love. Climbing giant creatures and finding their weak points is as reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus as anything I’ve played since that game. Blocking and countering enemies has that classic Souls-like feel, though Eternal Strands is much more forgiving than Dark Souls or Elden Ring. After each trek into the wild, you’ll return with a bounty of material to improve your equipment, just like in Monster Hunter. I love all these games, and I certainly don’t mind playing them all at once.
There were moments Eternal Strands tested my patience, but it was worth pushing through for the next moment it had me jumping on the couch in celebration. Combining mechanics from a host the most popular games of the last few decades into a colorful adventure might not seem like a big risk, but it paid off either way.
