PS5

Published on January 28th, 2025 | by Nay Clark

Eternal Strands Review (PS5)

Attempt to banish an evil presence within the confines of the unknown in this unrestricting journey to save magic, understand leadership, and find your purpose in life. Eternal Strands is an action-adventure game developed and published by Yellow Brick Games and released on January 28th of 2025. Eternal Strands is very much influenced by games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus, and Dragon’s Dogma in its overall design. Running around open fields and taking down large mythical beasts, combing through the nooks and crannies of mysterious caves, and crafting stronger weapons with built in resistances are only a few things you will be accomplishing in this land that runs on magic. Fight back the blight to make history in this expertly crafted adventure.

Eternal Strands begins with a caravan of people with their own unique skills trying to make it into the closed off region of the Enclave. You play as Brynn, a young Weaver who is committed to finding out the history of this forgotten world that no one has entered in years. By warding off the poisonous mist surrounding the Enclave, the gang barely make it through to the other side with all of their limbs attached and clear of mind. After establishing a base, the group are eager to explore the cryptic and forbidden land, but as the new leader of the group you have to take charge and make decisions for what you think is best for the team. Steadily branch out and uncover the secrets and dangers of this outlawed realm.

The story is very rich in Eternal Strands. It sort of almost feels like too much with the amount of lengthy documents and lore nuggets that are dropped on you every so often. After you are done juggling all of the game’s elements that quickly get thrown at you and get more proficient with all of the gameplay mechanics separately, you can focus on the individual points more closely and appreciate the worldbuilding a lot more. I also enjoyed how finding out more about the story and world directly correlates into you exploring the world, how you must plan to equip yourself, and how to tackle certain situations. This cycle is very well thought out and I appreciate logistics like this in games where everything you do sort of cycles into other gameplay procedures making finding and doing things rewarding in themselves, but also rewarding in other facets within the gameplay.

The Enclave is a dangerous and wild place, so you have to be careful venturing out into the unknown. Exploring is very important and if you are not careful, you’ll quickly get taken down. The main flow of the game has you going out from your base to complete quests in an area and coming back to upgrade your gear so you can go back out and do even more. Getting stronger is no easy task either since finding rare crafting material may have you taking down strong monsters. The game strikes this really good balance between its push and pull makeup and I never got bored with completing tasks; if anything I always wanted to do “one more run” to see if I can find that one thing I needed before I call it quits only to see something off in the distance, let my curiosity get the best of me, and spending more hours playing than I intended.

The game has a semi-open world so you are in the boundaries of the encompassing Enclave which is veiled off from the rest of the world, but you explore different sectors within the Enclave. You’ll be drifting through muddied swamps, wandering wide forests, and traversing lost cities. The environments are diverse and there are a lot of vivid colors and beautiful vistas. Even more set dressing pieces within the world are pretty amazing and thought provoking like sleeping stone giants adjoined to trees.

Journeying through this world is made extremely easy through the game’s stamina system. Brynn can climb anything, including large monsters, and if you lose all of your stamina, you’ll fall off of whatever you are climbing. You will automatically start climbing if you just run straight into something, but there is also a dedicated button that allows you to hold on to something or latch off of it. This climbing ability works for the most part, but I would often climb things when I wouldn’t want to or the game would obviously have a hard time in determining if I’m trying to walk past something or if I am trying to climb it. The button to climb things is also the same button to pick up items, so I would frequently fasten onto my ice walls that I would make after a heated battle when I’m just trying to get the loot the enemies dropped. This repeated process became increasingly aggravating the more it happened, but is only a mild hiccup in such a substantial game.

Brynn is equipped with a sword and shield in which she can use to strike her enemies and defend herself. Brynn is also adept with a bow to shoot enemies from afar and can also unleash a pretty nasty roundhouse kick. As a Weaver, someone who can use magic, and owner of the Mantle, a cloak that channels magic, you have a large variety in how to take down the otherworldly foes you’ll run into. Magic is a key mechanic in Eternal Strands and you can really wreak havoc with the way the game allows you to manipulate it. You start out with being able to create ice and a telekinetic ability, but you’ll quickly unlock more powers that grant you with a lot more possibilities in combat.

You can use your ice to freeze enemies in place, allowing you to pummel them to a pulp. You can pick up rocks and explosive plants to chuck at your combatants or you can even pick up the enemy and toss them around. Ways to disrupt the dwellers of the Enclave is basic at first, but opens up in creative ways not only with magic, but understanding the world better and enhancing yourself. You can use your ice to create blockades to shield yourself or create bridges to get across large gaps in the field. You can use explosions to damage opponents or you can use it to propel yourself to new heights and slash down onto the heads of the unaware. There is some really cool stuff you can do in the game and your imagination runs wild with every new enchantment you gain. On the flip side, enemies may have magical properties as well that can effectively harm you in a multitude of ways. Early on in the game, I climbed over a rock formation to try to get a chest from a wolf with frost powers. It easily overpowered me since its ice magic could seep around it creating a floor of frigid danger, continuously chipping away my health while I tried to fend off its aggressive attacks.

Each area in the game has a large enemy that has to be more strategically handled with. These titans need to be climbed, Shadow of the Colossus style, in order to be slain. It is imperative that you use all of your acquired skills during these combat encounters as the large beasts do a lot of damage. These fights require you to do certain things like to attack sensitive points in a behemoth’s armor to unlatch it from its body and reveal a Locus Point which is essentially a weak point that will grant you new powers. Completing these large tasks also nets you with good materials that you can use back at the base.

Back at base, you can talk to the other members of your party to learn more about them and gain insight about your mission. They watch you while you are exploring the Enclave from the Scry, a device that lets the others communicate with you, centered in the middle of the encampment so they are always intertwined with you and the story. Each individual also acts as a place to upgrade and enhance your abilities. You can craft armor and weapons to make them stronger and then upgrade your favorite sets, improve your magic and give it more properties, as well as make potions to increase your resistance to different elements. Everything requires resources like wood or iron that you can find out in the world from breaking boxes, in chests, and taking down enemies you run into along the way.

Finding blueprints out in the world grants you with new armor or weapons you can forge, dumping your unused resources into the caravan levels up the individual stations that you can craft at, and there is a day and night system that constitutes the weather, enemy spawn points, and how you wander the world. There are a lot of mechanics in the game and they all successfully blend well together. There is even a dialogue system where you can pick different options in conversations that determine the kind of hero you want to be. While the choices you can choose from are more there for fun than shaping the story, it’s still an intricate component to have that reveals different parts of the characters through other means than facts from the narrative. Managing resources isn’t demanding in any way, shape, or form and the systems harmoniously create a fun game overall.

While the game is fun to play and will keep you fully engaged, it does fashion a certain type of subpar quality during moments in the gameplay. Controlling Brynn feels either a little too loose or a little too sluggish; there’s really no perfect balance. Committing to attacks and actions is tricky because it’s hard to determine exactly what the specific outcome will be. This impromptu way the game works doesn’t feel purposeful, especially when you go flying off of the back of a giant. While playing with the magic is fun, the execution isn’t as solid as you would want it to be. Locking on to specific things you want to interact with is flimsy which haphazardly causes a lot of odd mix ups during combat. I feel like a lot of my time getting injured wasn’t called for due to these weird happenings.

The different style of graphics feels a bit messy at times due to an inconsistent artstyle between gameplay, dialogue, and cutscenes, but overall, the game looks great. It’s easy to get absorbed in this beautiful atmosphere. Magic effects like using fire to scorch the ground look incredible. Characters have a suave presence and I enjoyed what they brought to the table. Dialogue is all impressive and the voice actors not only put a lot of emotion in their work, but also a lot of ingenuity. The music sounds nice and relaxing while exploring and spices up during heated bouts. You’ll be doing so much during the game though, that the music easily gets drowned out by what happens on the screen. There were no memorable tracks that would help define Eternal Strands as Eternal Strands either.

Final Thoughts?

Eternal Strands is a big game with some big guts. It’s awesome that this small team can make a game that stands tall on its own against other big names from the industry. Eternal Strands is entertaining, clever, and spontaneous. The game’s different mechanics fold nicely into each other and produce a grounded gameplay loop that is super addicting. Exploring the extensive and differing lands never gets tiring and the voice acting that guides you are magnificent. Climbing is clumsy, controlling your character is incongruous, and multiple art design choices reads wrong, but everything woven together fabricates a game that is meticulous and endearing.

About the Author

Nay Clark Gaming holds a special place in my heart and I never stop talking about video games. I really love all types of games and have an interest in games that have complicated stories and lore because I enjoy untangling the mystery of it all. When I'm not gaming, I unsuccessfully try to control three amazing and incredibly bright kids.

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