Yellow Brick Games’ newest RPG, Eternal Strands combines a fun art style and challenging gameplay to deliver an incredible time.
Eternal Strands
Developer: Yellow Brick Games
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5 (Reviewed On), Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: January 28, 2025
For the past few days I’ve been enthralled by the vibrant world that Yellow Brick Games has created in their action RPG release Eternal Strands. Out now on PC, PS5 and Xbox series X|S, Eternal Strands is an absolute blast to play and hides a challenging game underneath it’s beautifully crafted story of exploration and team work.
The first thing that caught my eye when I fired up Eternal Strands the first time was the art style. The world of Eternal Strands is beautifully animated in bright vibrant colors, with character designs that look like they’d be right at home in a Disney movie. Make no mistake however, this colorful comic book art style hides an at times brutal game that had me calling it “bubble gum Dark Souls” seriously, this game will hurt you if you aren’t careful.
Players take control of Bryn, a young talented Weaver determined to restore her people to their cultural home. Bryn is just one of a group of weavers that make up her camp team, or band, who after the game’s opening have found themselves on the other side of the looking glass without most of their supplies and in a land that has been locked away for decades. Bryn becomes the group’s “point” and gets sent out into the wild to explore and gather resources to replace those that the band lost during their mad dash to safety.
Eternal Strands forgoes traditional leveling in the game, instead Bryn’s melee and magic attack power is increased as she explores and unlocks new regions and crafting materials. Bryn’s gear is treated the same way as enemies do not drop gear, instead new gear is acquired in the form of new schematics discovered during Bryn’s travels, which encourages players to explore more and more of The Enclave. After all, better materials means better gear and upgraded camp services.
Assisting Bryn as she works her way through the dangerous new lands her band has discovered are a cast of unique characters players learn more about as the story progresses. First on the list is Oria, the band’s original point and Bryn’s mentor. Oria mans the band’s scry device, a tool used to keep the band in contact with Bryn while she’s out exploring, as well as the game’s death mechanic.
While out in the wilds, should Bryn’s life fall dangerously low, Oria is tasked with pulling her back to the last loomgate (the game’s fast travel points) that was unlocked in the region, at the cost of materials gathered by Bryn. Initially when this happened I was a little frustrated, crafting materials, while abundant do not drop from mobs, or the environment in bulk, players can easily burn a couple of hours accumulating the materials needed to upgrade the various workstations in camp, only to have that effort get wiped out by an unfortunate fall or underestimation of the strength of an enemy. It was this mechanic that led me to hyper focus on upgrading my camp’s workstations as quickly as possible.
This brings me to Casmyn, the band’s quartermaster. It’s through Casmyn’s caravan station that players can upgrade the various workstations throughout the camp. For me upgrading Casmyn’s station became a priority, due to the upgrades increasing not only Bryn’s inventory, but the amount of materials that can be placed in a “safe pouch” for safekeeping when Bryn is pulled back with the Scry.
It’s at Casmyn’s caravan that players can also select their equipment load out for upcoming expeditions.This brings me to one minor frustration I had with the game’s early moments was the lack of inventory space, Bryn’s bag fills up pretty quickly, and with no discovered loomgates other than the starting one and no means of quickly getting back to camp, I found myself either needing to double back, or having to play “what mats do I keep.” Which made the first couple of hours of game play a little frustrating.
Players will be relieved to know that this does get better as the region is explored and additional loomgates are unlocked. This minor inconvenience eventually almost falls by the complete wayside after Bryn unlocks the ability to travel back to camp from anywhere while exploring, with the only nuisance being that you can’t return to the exact point that you left, instead returning to the region you left via the camp’s loomgate. Which very well may not be a real nuisance at all, and I am just a spoiled action RPG fan that has gotten too used to a town portal scroll.
Bryn’s ability to survive the perils of the Enclave are very much dependent on her gear, and magical abilities, all which can be upgraded, and crafted at base camp. The folks responsible for keeping Bryn alive, and keeping her the well oiled combat machine she is make up the remaining members of the camp.
Sola, the camp’s blacksmith, and her mysterious apprentice Sevastyan (Sev for short) are responsible for the crafting, and upgrading of as well as provding reforging options for Bryn’s gear. It’s here that players can swap out materials to strengthen their weapons and change their gears’ elemental resistances. A mechanic that becomes increasingly important as new areas and their elemental hazards are revealed.
This brings us to Bryn’s magical abilities, which are focused on the elements, initially Bryn’s magical abilities are limited to ice and weaver (a kind of telekinetic/void style energy) attacks but as the story progresses Bryn is able to unlock additional magical attacks through the use of “strands” which are woven into Bryn’s mantle by the camp’s tailor, Dahm at his “atelier” as he likes to call his workshop.
Rounding out the group and serving as Bryn’s alchemist and librarian, is Laen, it’s their potions that keep Bryn from feeling the heat, or the chill of the Enclave environs long enough for Bryn to dig through some of the hidden caves and abodes throughout the area, it’s in these areas that citizens of the Enclave have stashed random notes, along with crafting schematics and rare crafting materials.
Potion’s aren’t Laen’s only responsibility in the band, as they are also responsible for deciphering the scraps of knowledge Bryn finds as she explores locations. This exploration is key, as the lore Bryn uncovers throughout her travels unlocks more and more information about the region she’s in, from enemy types to materials found, each note found means more knowledge about the region, including revealing the region’s big bad.
The boss fights in Eternal Strands have to be one of my favorite mechanics in the game, 9 in total, these boss fights give a heavy nod to Shadow of the Colossus in feel, and led me to some very intense white knuckled moments during my playthrough. It’s these same bosses that give Bryn the strands she needs to power up her magic, with the various bosses providing the fire, ice, or weaver strands that Dahm uses to power Bryn’s mantle.
During these boss fights, players can choose to either harvest the boss, or defeat the boss outright, the first option adds a level of challenge to the fight as in order to harvest a boss players will need to figure out how to expose the strand the boss carries, and the process to expose these points changes depending on the boss being fought.
These boss fights is where Yellow Brick Games’ promise of “climb everything” come into play, as Bryn will need to climb onto these behemoths during her fights with them to expose, and weaken areas on the boss. I found these fights to be challenging, and very exciting, even when having to go after the same boss a few times to fully power up a specific power. In fact in some cases I was pretty excited when a boss happened to wander into my site while I was out exploring, after all, might not need the strands, but I won’t say no to legendary mats!
The world of The Enclave is massive, and made larger in feel by the lack of a minimap in the player UI, a lack that initially I was little grumpy about, but the longer I played the game, the more I realized that the lack of the minimap really opened up the game, and very much drove home the idea of exploration, and after awhile, I came to enjoy the fact that I wasn’t constantly looking to the upper right hand corner of my screen to see where I was, instead I found myself simply picking a direction and seeing what I could find. While there is no minimap, players can opt to throw a compass on their screen in the game’s option menu, which I did find helpful, players also do have a very detailed map of the area they are in in their journal, which I found extremely helpful in getting my bearings after I had been wandering around for a bit.
Another thing I have loved so far in my playthrough of Eternal Strands is the fact that players can climb anything. Seriously, if Bryn can touch it, she can climb it, and if she can climb it, there’s a 95% chance she can destroy it too, which led to me plummeting to my almost death a few times due to my use of fire on a wooden stair case. Like I said, I’m really glad you can climb everything, because if you couldn’t there would of been more than a few moments of “well now, how do I get out of here”, although some clever use of Bryn’s ice magic helped in those situations, as players can use the ice blocks Bryn creates as bridges and ledges.
While the ability to climb on anything in the game is a lot of fun, it can lead to some awkward moments in the control of Bryn’s movements, there were a few times where I found myself clinging in an odd position to a wagon wheel as I had started to climb it versus attacking it, these moments were more comical than hindering, and I was able to quickly recover from the brief moments of “what is happening here”.
One element of the physics of the game that I did find slightly annoying was Bryn’s follow through, I found out very quickly in the game, she will follow a mob off the edge of a cliff if given a chance, I found a quick fix to this was simply using Bryn’s weaver magic to yank the mob from the edge of a cliff only to yeet them into a wall.
The world created in Eternal Strands is beautifully rendered, and at times I found myself standing atop a cliff, or battlement just admiring the view of the region while I was trying to figure out where to head next. Each of the regions that make up the Enclave, are pretty sizable, and provide a lot of area for players to explore, and the game’s climb everything mechanic does a great job of making these large areas seem less so as players can pick their own routes to where ever they may need to go.
The environments that Yellow Brick Games has crafted for this game are alive as well, with weather systems and changing enemy types depending on the weather. These features are changed by Bryn resting, as this advances time from day to night, or night to day depending on when Bryn decides she needs a nap, not only does Bryn’s naps refresh the weather of the zone, but also where the region bosses happen to be roaming.
Players will want to keep an eye on the weather in teh zone they are traveling to, as Bryn’s magic becomes a factor, in zones plagued by drought, Bryn’s flame magic may ignite more than she bargained for, zones under a flash freeze hide pockets of numbing cold, that are damaging to Bryn, and require the use of flame magic to warm things up.
Overall Eternal Strands has been an absolute joy to play, a beautifully animated game, with a rich a story, and amazing world building, the team at Yellow Brick Games has created an extremely enjoyable action RPG that does an amazing job at reflecting the roots of the creators behind the game.
Wonderful characters, and amazing story telling make this game a must have for anyone who’s enjoyed games like Enshrouded, or Shadows of the Colossus. While the game does have some minor annoyances mainly with Bryn’s controls, and the limited inventory space, they do not take away and the enjoyment I found myself experiencing while playing this game.
Eternal Strands is out now on PS5, PC, and on Xbox Series X/S.
