Climbing out of Inspiration.
Eternal Strands is one of those games you possibly glance upon your platform’s storefront and have likely never heard of. This is a game with likely no marketing budget and one that relies solely on reviews, influencers, or general word of mouth. I bring this up because Eternal Strands is damn impressive, a combination of the likes of Shadow of the Colossus, Dragon’s Dogma, and Breath of the Wild. While it doesn’t necessarily hit those highs, it’s nonetheless an impressive feat by debut studio, Yellow Brick Games.
Right out of the gate, my initial comparison to what was in front of me was the type of presentation that Airship Syndicate often has in their titles. There is a similar art style on offer here with portraits of their cast for conversations, similar to what we saw in BattleChasers and Ruined King: A League of Legends story. Frankly, this was part of the reason why I was so interested in Eternal Strands. I adore those games, and the studio, even back when it was called Vigil Games, and was hyped for an experience that, in some ways, felt comfortably familiar.
Eternal Strands is a game built around discovery, the creative spirit, community, and survival. As your group of Weavers are lost, escaping for their lives from a miasma that consumes anything in its wake, they find sanctuary in a place known largely through the bedtime stories they were told as children. As they begin to explore and discover what happened, they realize they are not alone and that their actions might save this place once and for all, or destroy it and the world around them.
Yellow Brick Games took the monster climbing traits of Shadow of the Colossus and Dragon’s Dogma and placed them in a colorful and contained world that has a gorgeous aesthetic and flow to it. It’s broken apart, destroyed, and forgotten, but life continues to carry on. Beasts and other forces occupy its crumbling civilization as statues of past legends are left in disarray. To make matters worse, the weather and survivable conditions change on a whim, from cold snaps that will chill you to the bone, to the miasma lurking around you that will consume you, it’s an ever-changing wilderness that is very unforgiving.
Eternal Strands has a large cast, but the adventure focuses on the development of its newest recruit, Brynn. When her mentor, Oria is hurt during their escape into the Enclave, Brynn must take over the mantle as Point, and head out into the wilderness to find resources to build their camp back up, and to get to the bottom of what exactly happened here, all while attempting to build trust with her allies who have yet begun to rely on her. Seeing these relationships change is one thing, but seeing certain relationships blossom into something else is equally exciting.
As you begin to put the pieces together of just what happened here, you’ll discover loomgates that allow travel to a variety of unique locations. From the lush wildness of Glintwood Hollow, the swamps of Dredger’s Mire, to the broken city of either Upper or Lower Dynevron, there is a lot to explore here as each area is vast and expansive, containing different weather conditions and epic encounters. Certain areas will have additional maps to them, more loomgates to track down, and bits of lore to uncover. You’ll also want to explore fully to find new blueprints for weapons and armor that allow for some customization, but also weapons that have elemental effects.
In fact, Eternal Strands takes weather and elemental effects to a whole new standard. Brynn can wield what are called Weave Strands. These come in the flavors of Kinetic, Frost, and Flame. This creates a system called Thermophysics. Yellow Brick Games has crafted each part of the game to use this system, allowing each object, whether big or small to react to both frost and flame. Firing a flaming arrow upon a rock will cause it burn for a small period of time, warming the air around the rock until it returns to a normal temperature. Firing that same arrow into the grass, will ignite it, causing a fire to break out. While that isn’t anything new, this system changes should the weather be cold, requiring more effort to make this happen to the low temperature. And, as you would assume, fire will melt snow and ice, allowing for new discoveries to be made.
This system also lends itself to what is called Tempering. When a creature becomes hot or cold, they enter a state called “tempered”. This system allows you to get better loot or risk what normally would have dropped. For example, there are wolf-like creatures called Acala’s that normally drop fur. Set them on fire and have them die due to the heat and they will drop hides instead. This system also works for the flora as well, resulting in the possible loss of certain drops, but the possibility of higher tier materials to drop as well. It’s a clever system that I don’t think I have ever seen anywhere.
As for what all these materials mean? Well, Eternal Strands has likely the best crafting system I have ever seen. While at a glance, it is nothing different than what you have seen before. You have a blueprint that allows the creation of new weapons or armor, you use up four resources to craft it, whether they are forged, tanned, carved, or woven, but each resource affects the color of some aspect of it. However, you can find better materials and then reforge the item by swapping it out, making it better and likely with a new color. For example. In my Hearthguard Arkplate armor, I have Iridesyl as my main component. It requires 8 of them. If I was to swap it with Sovereign Entrium, it would increase my armor by 6, boosting it to 52. It would also change the color from green to white in the process. It allows existing items to find new purpose and gives you a reason to go back out there and harvest more materials.
While frost and flame certainly have their uses in procuring different materials, they find purpose in combat in ways people have wanted for years. Flame certainly tends to borrow ideas we have seen before by setting things on fire, but Kinetic powers and Frost powers can take what could have been a very standard game and presents Eternals Strands with leading the pack in how these things can be used. Kinetic powers allow you to grab objects at a distance allowing you to throw back objects that have been thrown at you, or simply yeet enemies into the distance. You can also create a bubble that pulls in enemies and objects as it explodes, or a tunnel that allows you to leap into the air, which is perfect for getting back atop a towering Ark creature when you have fallen back down.
While Kinetic powers are impressive and present a lot of interesting ways to go about combat, the Frost abilities are second to none and provide opportunities I’ve never seen in a game. The most basic ability out of the gate is the frost armor. This wraps around Brynn and makes her highly resistant to dangerous temperatures and can explode in a cloud of razor shard ice shards. And while you also have a frost mine that can certainly bring the pain, it is Ice Wall ability that is simply incredible and will easily be the power most players use. The Ice Wall states that it “draws moisture from the air to create solid ice with concentrated frost magic. Perfect for creating bridges or ledges for climbing as well as pinning foes with icy mass.” What this means is you can freeze a dragon or creature to the ground, or shoot ice on the wings of flying foes and make them crash down to the ground. You can surround enemies that flee in ice and attack them from behind. You can freeze an enemy to a flying creature and watch as they take to the air with them, until the ice melts or they attack it and watch them fall to the ground below. This power may sound simple, but its effects are nonetheless jaw-dropping.
The foes you’ll take on vary from grunt soldiers, and wolf-like creatures, to other beasts that will attack you on sight, among other threats as the story moves on. That said, it is the towering monsters and creatures that will be the primary focus of how you’ll harvest more materials and the strands needed to improve your powers. From the Ashpeak Drake to the bird-like Highland Iceclaw, you’ll also contend with the large four-legged Rehnland Sledgewyrm, which has some devastation attacks and a tail whip that can easily launch you over the cliff, resulting in the loss of the items that Oria cannot retrieve more than five or six of. While these creatures are something to behold, it is the Arks themselves that are the fixation of the story.
Whether it is the Ark of the Stricken Earth or the Forge and Living Flame, or the Winter Tide Ark, these towering beasts are familiar to fans of Shadow the Colossus as they are as tall as buildings and have weak points to exploit. Each large creature is generally tied to an element, and you can harvest their strand and contribute to leveling up your power. Each creature, including the Arks, has certain ways that you’ll discover to harvest their strand. Whether it is breaking off all the frosted bits of armor, or destroying nodes that make up their body, harvesting is different for each beast, such as the Highland Iceclaw needing its wings attached to it to harvest, meaning you’ll likely have to harvest it in the air. While the harvesting act is impressive, I wish it had a more sizable impact on the harvest as it sort of just falls flat in its conclusion.
To harvest these creatures and tend to their weakpoints to even damage them, in the case of the Arks, you’ll need to climb them. This is where the Shadow of the Colossus and Dragon’s Dogma comparisons come into play. You’ll have a stamina system to keep you in check, and the Kinetic jump can catapult you right back to the top should you fall. Arks can grab you upon their body and some of these grabs feel a bit too generous, especially when they clearly have missed you. Still, climbing on enemies has always been fun, and I am glad to see it used here to good effect.
While Frost, Flame, and Kinetic powers may be powerful weapons to use, you’ll also have a bow, sword and shield, and two-handed weapons as well. These come in the styles of mundane, frost, flame, or kinetic, allowing them to deal those types of damage. While I won’t spoil a certain enemy type, there are those that need to be killed with elements, making these types of weapons extremely useful. You can craft, reforge, and upgrade your gear, making it more effective but also heavier, which can affect Brynn’s movements as well. Gear comes in the format of head armor, torso, arm, and leg, all of which looks impressive and can be reforged and upgraded as well.
While you will collect materials for crafting, you also benefit from donating those materials to the camp. You can salvage resources to build up the camp, such as increasing the size of your pack to hold more resources, improving the crafting station to make better gear, or aiding in holding more healing vials should you upgrade Laen’s archive station. These all help in making Brynn better equipped for the adventure at hand. One nice part of this system is also the ability to trade for resources. For example, I couldn’t for the life of me get Serenite to drop. However, with enough resources, I was able to trade for it, solving my issue for two of the game’s optional side quests.
Throughout the roughly 25-30 hour journey, you’ll take on a variety of side quests that all benefit both Byrnn and her fellow Weavers and allies. These quests can be nothing more than fetch quests, but several of them are personal matters that allow you to really get to know the cast, or even save them in the manner of one character having an illness that is causing them to be paranoid about their survival. Seeing the whole cast come together to address this really brought on a sense of community you don’t normally see in games that have a bunch of characters in a hub location. That said, I do wish there was a better follow-up to completing that quest.
Your base camp features your fellow weavers, which consist of Sola, Sevastyan, Dahm, Laen, Casmyn, and Oria. Sola tends to your weapons, Laen with your potions and lore, and Dahm is who you’ll engage with to improve your strands, the abilities such as Frost and Flame. Casmyn is unsure of your abilities at first, but comes to rely on you and keeps the caravan stacked with your resources. Sevastyn is who will build some of the bigger gadgets you’ll need for the story, and Oria will provide comms when you are on the mission, talking to you through the weave, a type of communications tool that allows them to see what you see. This cast does expand in certain ways, and it's rare in a game with such a healthy cast that I tend to like them all. However, even while there was one character that I didn’t really take to at the start, I eventually did and found where the story went to benefit their development greatly. That said, I do wish the first character that is added to your camp would have been more involved in certain elements of the story given their interest in becoming involved.
Eternals Strands is a very good-looking game, and I adore the cartoon cutscenes that are occasionally showcased during the game. The aesthetic is something we have seen before in the likes of what Airship Syndicate had done before with Darksiders, back when they were called Vigil Games. That style has continued and many games have used something similar, even to go as far as to say Fortnite has a similar look to it as well. Nonetheless, the characters, world, and portraits here are great and everything presented across its world is stylish and charming.
I also have to commend the team on the amount of voice acting here. Mei Mac is fantastic as Brynn, and brings a solid depth of emotion to the role. David Annen as the Eye works as a great character, especially given what he goes through throughout the story. While I wasn’t at first taken with Casmyn, Rebecca Hanssen is perfect in the role and allows her to really grow throughout the journey. Apart from the voicing acting, the score is pretty good as well, despite anything really standing out that was memorable to me. It certainly serves its purpose, but lacks a theme to really latch onto.
While being able to climb anything does have its drawbacks in Brynn constantly wanting to attach herself to it, even when trying to run away, I rarely had many issues across the game. The Ark grabbing can be a tad too generous as you will see Brynn move against her will to be snatched up, but I never once had the game freeze or see the framerate dip to anything unplayable.
Eternal Strands may initially look generic and not offer much to it that hasn’t been done before, but it greatly opens up to have a flexibility with its powers and systems that I don’t see anyone doing. For a debut game from a studio with an immense amount of credits to their names, this is a solid adventure that is rich and rewarding in its system as much as it is to its story and charm. While it certainly is inspired from a wealth of games, it more than justifies its existence by actually making those components feel fun to engage with. People often say they want new games with fresh experiences, and Eternal Strands may be set in the familiar, but it is certainly one of those games to support and celebrate.
Developer - Yellow Brick Games.
Publisher - Yellow Brick Games. Released - January 28th, 2025. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming. Rated - (T) - Violence, Sexual Themes, Drug Reference. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X/S. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.