By Eternal Strands is the first game developed by the indie studio Yellow Brick Games, and it was released with rave reviews by many content creators.
But is Eternal Strands actually worth playing? The short answer is Yes! But it depends.
I spent some time playing the game and gathered enough thought to recommend the game. While I enjoyed Eternal Strands a lot, it’s probably not the ideal game for me.
However, it could be the perfect game for you. Here’s why.
What Is Eternal Strands?
Eternal Strands is an action-adventure game with an emphasis on taking expeditions to hunt monsters and explore biomes.
The game feels like a combination of Monster Hunter and Breath of the Wild. But there it doesn’t play like those games.
In Eternal Strands, you take on the role of Brynn, a strong warrior with magical abilities who joins a group of other adventurers on the search to uncover the secrets of a civilization called Enclave. On that path, you have to deal with behemoth dragons, giant robot-like constructs, and more.
Main Gameplay Loop
The main gameplay system of Eternal Strands is simple. You go on expeditions, similar to Monster Hunter, with a goal in mind.
The expeditions take place in a limited open-world environment, where you can gather resources, complete a task, and head back out with your loot. If you die, you respawn back at camp and lose all the loot.
Everything on the map is climbable, like in Breath of the Wild.
In the first few missions, you will learn how to manage resources, which materials you need to gather, how to upgrade and craft weapons, as well as how to upgrade the stations at the camp to gain access to better gear.
Resource management is crucial in Eternal Strands. Since you only have very few slots in your inventory, you can’t carry everything. So you have to choose carefully which resources to collect and bring back to camp.
Once you collect enough resources, you can upgrade your weapons to deal more damage or for protection against certain elements. In the beginning, you will have access to a sword and shield as well as a bow. Later, you will gain access to other types of weapons.
Physics-Based Magic System
One of the coolest things in Eternal Strands is its magic system, which allows you to manipulate objects around you in creative ways to deal with enemies more easily.
At the very start, you will have two magic abilities. One to manipulate objects in the environment, like lifting objects and throwing them at enemies.
And another frost-themed ability that lets you freeze enemies and objects in place.
During your missions, you will learn how to use these abilities to your advantage and plan your attacks, especially when dealing with groups of enemies.
Once you upgrade your camp, you will be able to unlock more powerful and way cooler powers.
Towering Behemoth Battles
During your expeditions, you will have to deal with some giant monsters and machines, which the game calls constructs.
You need to defeat these constructs in order to gather some components and materials for upgrading gear as well as for unlocking new abilities.
Even though I usually hate boss battles in most adventure games, it felt fun to tackle these towering machines in Eternal Strands.
You even get to climb those monsters to take out their armor, piece by piece.
Combat Falls A Bit Short
That also brings me to one aspect of the game that felt a bit disappointing to me—Combat.
In the beginning, combat in Eternal Strands feels a bit janky. Ranged combat using the bow feels almost impossible to work with, especially with enemies jumping around before I could land even one arrow. Even if I do, it will do very little damage.
Sword and shield combat is the only viable option. The only problem with sword combat is changing directions. Once you initiate a combat move, you can’t change direction before completing the animation.
For example, if I click the attack button to hit a monster, the character moves forward with the attack animation. So when the monster steps to the right to avoid the attack, my character is still moving forward.
The only way to change direction is to stop the attack and use movement buttons to turn my character around. Then start the attack again.
This felt a bit frustrating and made combat a bit uninteresting to me. Thankfully, the magic system fills this gap by allowing you to use magic attacks to slow enemies and freeze them in place.
Engaging Voice Acting
Eternal Strands has a strong female lead, and I know most gamers are hesitant to buy a game with female leads. But this game balances this character’s personality quite well to ensure you can relate with her.
There’s no politically correct propaganda in this game and it even allows you to choose how you respond during discussions. The main character is designed to be dynamic and she knows there’s a lot to learn, unlike those cocky characters in most other games these days.
The impressive voice acting across all the various characters in this game does a great job of bringing them to life, even through the non-animated dialog screens.
The Story Is Not Very Interesting
The story, on the other hand, is not very interesting.
When you start an adventure game, you expect to feel on the edge not knowing what’s going to happen next. And it gives you motivation to work towards the next goal and level up to explore the next area.
I didn’t get that feeling with the story in Eternal Strands. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either.
Especially at the beginning of the game, the story is basically nonexistent. That’s mainly because the game starts very slow but the gameplay gets interesting little by little. So don’t give up on the game in the beginning, push through as it gets interesting once you enter the next region.
Is Eternal Strands Worth Buying?
For an indie game, Eternal Strands feels amazing. It runs well, no major bugs to complain about, or any bad mechanics to ruin the fun. It’s a fantastic entry point for Yellow Brick Games.
Of course, there’s still room for the game to improve. I would especially like to see better movement during combat, more enemy variety, and maybe a glider to drop from big heights to avoid fall damage.
Other than that, I still enjoyed Eternal Strands for quite a while. And I think you would too, especially if you enjoyed games like Monster Hunter, Breath of the Wild, or even Genshin Impact.
The only reason I said this game didn’t click with me is because I’m not a big fan of games with expedition-like gameplay systems. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the big boss battles in Eternal Strands.
Disclaimer: I received a review key for this game from the developers via Keymailer. However, the review is not sponsored or in any way influenced by the developers or the publishers of the game.
