Eternal Strands

Ambitious, surprising, and full of brilliant solutions, Eternal Strands is clearly a title developed by a team brimming with passion and talent, pulling off an exhilarating and uniquely complex adventure. Unfortunately, however, the resources of an independent team are what they are, and Yellow Brick Games' work is held back by modest production values, a somewhat uninspired art direction, and a few too many technical hiccups. Yet, despite its flaws, this remains an undeniable gem, giving us hope for the team's future. We can only hope it gets the recognition it deserves and that these developers can continue on their path—because with a little more time and resources, they clearly have the potential to create something truly great.

Eternal Strands is an action-adventure with a rather generic, if enjoyable, aesthetic and gameplay that takes a while to get going. However, when you manage to uncover its best cards, you'll find yourself immersed in a well-conceived, well-written and damn entertaining title.

Eternal Strands weaves its myriad influences into something memorable, beautiful and utterly enthralling.

Eternal Strands offers minimal handholding and opens a vast world to explore, so you’re often left fumbling around in empty spaces to discover the path to your next quest. But even this padding just leaves you yearning for the next exhilarating encounter you know will be around the corner.

Eternal Strands has the DNA from familiar and critically acclaimed games of the last few decades. But, more importantly, it works tirelessly to differentiate itself from the pack. This game is the kind of sandbox players enjoy diving into, one both forgiving and fun. Yet it’s the brilliant narrative and character work that give Yellow Brick Games’ debut an edge, making you come back run after run.

Eternal Strands is a light and breezy fantasy action RPG that's elevated by its innovative use of physics-based magic that makes even minor combat encounters feel novel. It's also thrilling to take on the larger foes, though this is more short-lived than the likes of Monster Hunter.

The game has an addicting leveling up system where all of your decisions help you out in multiple ways. While gameplay is unique and offers a lot of different ways you can go about any given situation, actually controlling the character is clunky which creates a lot of inadequate moments while playing. The robust magic and gorgeous world really puts this game in a category of its own to be seen among the established titles out there.

If you’re in the mood for a charming adventure through a gorgeous fantasy world, Eternal Strands is worth checking out.

Eternal Strands is an ambitious and satisfying first game for Yellow Brick Games. Its sandbox is teeming with interactions and calls for experimentation, its world is a pleasure to explore, and you get attached to its universe and characters despite their somewhat uneven writing.

Eternal Strands is a good game with good ideas, but it doesn't have the right structure to make the most of them, stretching its use until it becomes completely repetitive and compromising the strength of its dynamic action proposal with magic and physics.

Eternal Strands has brilliant gameplay but a weak story. It’s easy to love or hate. If you value exploration and mechanics, there’s a great game here—just don't mind the dialogues.

Since its first announcements, Eternal Strands has never hidden its big ambitions, and it must be said that it has proven to be a solid and surprisingly engaging project. The game world, the clever management of powers, the inclusion of "Titans," and how these features interact create a deeply satisfying experience, evoking feelings akin to triple-A titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s clear that the development team at Tellow Brick Games has poured their creative energy into the project. Of course, the budget and size of the team cannot compete with more high-profile titles, but Eternal Strands has several notable strengths, despite facing some significant drawbacks. Frame rate drops, an occasionally unresponsive camera, and imprecise magic and combat controls risk undermining the core gameplay. The story and artistic impact aren’t particularly groundbreaking but serve the roughly 25-hour gameplay experience well, while the sound design offers a few standout moments. If you're looking for a good action-adventure game, Eternal Strands may attract your attention, even if it is heavily derivative in nature.

With a mix of inspirations from games like Shadow of the Colossus, Dragon’s Dogma, and Breath of the Wild, Eternal Strands offers a fresh yet familiar action RPG experience with engaging combat, strategic encounters against giant foes, and an attractive art style. However, its ambitious design leads to occasional clunky mechanics, repetitive encounters, a lack of tutorials, and an overuse of silence in its sound design, making it feel somewhat incomplete after around 15 hours of play.

Eternal Strands has some excellent ideas that are only in need of a few layers of polish, that would make the game a must-play. This is a fantastic starting point and I’m eager to see what Yellow Brick Games does next.

Eternal Strands is a solid debut title from Yellow Brick Games. Despite some limitations, its combat system and dynamic interaction with the environment offer a variety of tactical possibilities to face epic enemies and expand the magic arsenal to keep confronting the Enclave's threats.

Eternal Strands, the first release from the new studio Yellow Brick Games, features new ideas mixed with the best practices from other genres. Not everything works as planned, but the interaction between environments, weather and magical powers allow for creative gameplay.

Eternal Strands establishes itself as a daring opera prima whose result is as interesting as it is uneven. The potion achieved by bringing together Dragon Age, Zelda Breath of the Wild and Shadow of the Colossus manages to attract attention, although there are aspects that could have been developed further.

Eternal Strands is a game with an uninteresting narrative, excessive dialogues and repetitive missions that leave much to be desired. However, the gameplay inspired by titles such as Breath of the Wild and Shadow of the Colossus stands out, especially in the battles against the Arcs, despite technical issues such as the camera and unbalanced combat. Visually, the use of Unreal Engine 5 is impressive, but the exploration design lacks depth. A title with ups and downs that could shine on Game Pass.

Mixing so many different concepts and getting it halfway right is quite an achievement and it can't be said that the setting, design and mechanics of Eternal Strands are not well cared for. But maybe the team has wanted to cover too much and has left much of the game halfway.

Eternal Strands is a delicious mix of genres that, despite some conceptual errors, manages to give us a truly memorable gameplay experience. With three ingredients, such as fire, ice and gravity, we will be able to achieve great things.

Eternal Strands doesn't make the best first impression, and certain aspects of it, such as the basics of combat, simply aren't impressive at all. Give it some time, though, and its unique features start to shine through, making this action-adventure definitely worth a look for fans of the genre.

Mixing elements from Breath of the Wild with Shadow of the Colossus sounds amazing on paper, but Eternal Strands somehow renders it a merely average experience.

Combining monster hunting, colossi climbing, exploration, and crafting, Eternal Strands often feels a little ‘lite’. However it’s defining feature is an elemental physics-based magic-system that is a valid competitor to Breath of the Wild. It’s that rare beast that often just sets you free to explore and find your own solutions, and its wonderful when it does.

Although Eternal Strands brings interesting lore, features engaging boss fights, offers fun gameplay and has a nice soundtrack, the game also suffers from several shortcomings. For example, the combat is somewhat clunky, the physics are inconsistent and the game lacks a bit in variety over time. A decent game, but it could've been better in many regards.

Eternal Strands has potential to be a great action adventure game, but it is weighed down by eternal fetch quests. It's beautiful to look at, but hard to withstand the hand holding hinderance. I know who this is for, but there are better entries to scratch your magic weaving itch.

Eternal Strands draws inspiration from various titles, blending their elements to forge a new adventure. While Yellow Brick Games succeeds in crafting a strong physics system that complements the protagonist’s powers, the experience is hindered by weak combat and early mission design. Though the characterization shines, enhanced by solid voice acting, the story struggles to immerse, likely due to its disjointed delivery. Ultimately, the game is brimming with strong ideas, but none are executed well enough to leave a lasting impression.

While it’s still a promising effort by a clearly talented studio, that promise seemingly could take several post-launch patches to show through fully. If you’re at all interested in Eternal Strands, I would personally recommend waiting several months to a year before picking it up.

Another example of a game that was not saved by a well-known creator. The author of the excellent Dragon Age has come up with a title that is a tiresome in the long run, although it has some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, the gameplay is too repetitive, and the fun quickly becomes monotonous.

It's entertaining in glimpses, no doubt about it, but from combat to meta upgrades, from static storytelling to a slightly half-baked daily gameplay loop, it's not like Eternal Strands offers a lot, but it also manages to telegraph pretty clearly to the player that it also fails to fully realise the ideas that are here. This isn't a disaster, but it is, unfortunately, an example of a game that fumbles with priorities, and it shows.

Look past the tedious story and Eternal Strands features some brilliant massive monster battles, especially when you unlock some great magic to use on them. The problem comes in getting to those bits, bogged down in plenty of bloat and repetition that results in its best moments being fewer and far between. Flawed but fun behemoth battling makes this an interesting if imperfect mix of its superior influences.

The fact that the bosses in Eternal Strands already feel like a chore to get through says it all. The game has grand ideas and even grander sources of inspiration. For a team of around 70 people, it’s quite impressive what they’ve accomplished. But when you choose to take cues from Monster Hunter, Shadow of the Colossus, and Breath of the Wild, you inevitably invite the associated expectations. Those games then become not just your inspirations but also your competition. And Eternal Strands doesn’t come close to these games.

Eternal Strands offers glimpses of promise with its stunning boss fights and intriguing gameplay mechanics. However, its repetitive structure and lack of depth make for a shallow experience. The game also falls short in storytelling and character development, leaving little to keep players engaged and making it difficult to recommend.

You can’t fault its ambition, but this is too little game stretched across too much open world map, with repetitive enemy encounters and tedious storytelling.