Kicking off 2025 with Eternal Strands has been a real joy. Developed by a small indie team at Yellow Brick Studios, this fantasy RPG blends magic powers, gear crafting, and scalable boss fights into an enjoyable adventure. In all honesty, I didn’t have the highest expectations for the game before jumping in. But after spending a few weeks exploring the magnificent biomes, fighting surprisingly cool bosses, and grinding for materials to make the next set of armour, I have to say that this game has offered more of an RPG experience than most triple-A games of late.
Eternal Strands follows a group of explorers who have gone on the search for an ancient location called the Enclave. This region was sealed off to the world centuries ago by a massive dome-like barrier that kept the outside world at bay. However, the group finds a way in after a rather unfortunate accident and now gets the opportunity to unravel all the magic and mystery that once lived in the land.
You take on the role of Brynn, who leads the exploration by venturing across the Enclave to discover these secrets. She is a fighter equipped with a full set of gear and has the ability to use magic powers in the form of ice, fire, and telekinesis thanks to her Weave abilities. Oh, and she can also climb any surface like a boss.
When I say “magic and mystery,” I mean it. Eternal Strands is an incredibly dense game with pages and pages of lore that touch on every aspect of this world. So much so that you’ll need a bit of patience to digest it all. Not only does the world offer various explorable hubs each with their own backstory and lore, but the NPCs in the game are layered in their own past stories and personalities.
I spent many an evening reading through research notes to understand a little bit more about the Titans that once lived in the lands. Not to mention the hours of dialogue and banter between the cast as each of them has something vital to contribute to the overall story and progression.
This was a strong point in Eternal Strands that I had to touch on. The game’s writing is brilliant. Instead of the supporting cast sitting on the sidelines and acting as more background noise to the events, these people (and animal beings) are wonderfully fleshed out. While they each play a role in the game’s mechanics, their livelihoods are where they come to life.
Sola, for example, is a blacksmith that makes gear, reforges my equipment, and upgrades it. But she is also a key role in understanding the world’s materials and how these metals, fabrics, and woods feed into the magic in the Enclave. Sevastyan is the world and weather expert. While he doesn’t have a direct mechanic, he does chime in on the radio throughout the game to provide insight into the location and often, why this said location is undergoing some drastic environmental change.
Then there’s Dahm, who is Sola’s husband (although I question how straight Dahm actually is). He is the magic expert. He provides information on the Weave Strands you find throughout the game, how to obtain them properly, and even upgrades the player’s Weave abilities after retrieving the strands.
I know many games have great NPCs behind them, but Eternal Strands does an excellent job fleshing out these people. Their backstories don’t feel tack-on. More like events that shaped who they are. The more you get to know them, the better their conversations get. The game clearly wanted me to develop relationships with them, and it achieved that goal.
Of course, Eternal Strands is more than just a game with awesome characters and loads of lore to get through. It is also a fantastic adventure. In short, the game spans various biomes that are discovered in the Enclave. These locations are scattered around the region. From upper cities where the sophisticated and rich reside to the forests and swamps where the poor lived.
As I completed the main quests, I naturally progressed through the story, which led me to new areas. However, exploration is a big part of what makes Eternal Strands so enjoyable. While you can easily finish up a main quest or two and move on, each location has a set number of gear recipes to find, enemies to kill for materials, one Titan boss fight, and Loom Gates to find and unlock.
Call this a checklist if you will. Side quests and companion quests are also thrown into the mix here. Not to mention the treasures and materials you can find too. Materials are the biggest draw here because they determine the game’s gear system and even how far I could upgrade the stores back in the camp.
These upgraded stores are unlocked by salvaging materials for upgrade points. As the game progresses, you need more points to upgrade more stores. An upgraded store means more possibilities in gear management. Sola, for example, could upgrade my gear but had a cap. After levelling up her forge using these salvaged materials, she could then further enhance it.
Materials come in all sorts of forms and rarities. Titan boss fights drop the best, but you can get materials from simply slicing up the enemy fodder or breaking boxes and chopping down trees. Every material counts because if you’re not ranking up NPC stores, you’re using the materials to forge and reforge gear.
Gear crafting takes these materials and results in a different outcome depending on the material type you use. It is a great system. For example, making a chest piece requires four different types of materials. What material is up to you. If you want a more fire-resistant set, you’ll toss materials in there that offer higher stat boosts to fire resistance. The same goes for ice, general defence, and weight. The lighter the gear, the less stamina you’ll use basically doing everything.
What I loved about this system is the reforge mechanics. Later in the game, I could always revisit a chest piece I had already crafted and reforge it. Here, I was able to choose newer, rarer material in the item and rework its stats to face the tougher end-game locations and enemies. I simply had to swap out the common hard leather for, say, the exotic iron leather. It would then boost the fire resistance.
It gets better. Depending on the material I used also resulted in a slightly different visual change on the item. The Kinetic Two Hander Sword, for example, had a massive blade that would change from a drab wooden style to a stylish brusque purple steel if I swapped out the softwood in favour of the Ironheart Crystal.
The material system is rather superb. It shaped how I approach each location, what enemy I would track down to kill, and how I would upgrade the gear after the process. It also determined how well I performed in certain locations given the ever-changing ecosystem.
Speaking of which, Eternal Strands relies heavily on replayability. The game encourages you to return to previous locations for quests, recipes, and materials. Thankfully, these locations change slightly each time too. You can choose to go into a location at night which spawns different enemies and items. There are also a number of drastic weather changes that appear at times too. Sometimes I would have returned back to Glintwood Hollow to see it go from a peaceful (as peaceful as it could get with savage wolves and towering titans around) forest to a sun-scorched furnace thanks to the “drought” modifier.
There was also a frozen and miasma modifier. The latter would turn the place into a dark and dangerous area with thick magic pollution scattered around the map.
These modifiers would then tie into the game’s magic system too. Drought would force me to use more ice-based skills and avoid fire skills. The drought weather would mean everything could catch on fire a lot easier, so having ice nearby was a nice way to cool things down.
While these modifiers start off as a real tough challenge, they do slowly fall to the side after a while. I found myself not really worrying about what the weather was like in the area because I had fire and ice resistant potions to counter it. The systems also didn’t provide enough of a threat in the late-game to my gear to worry about. But they were a pain to deal with in the early game.
A big standout in Eternal Strands are the boss fights. While these aren’t technically “bosses”, you will need to take down massive titans and creatures during the game. If you have played Shadows of the Colossus, these fights play out much the same as the game. You have to climb the creature to attack weak points, and cling to it to avoid being thrown off due to the lack of stamina.
Every fight was different. While there are similar Titans to take down, they all offered slightly different weapons and abilities that made them feel unique. My real standout fights were with the flying enemies, however. To cling to a Fire Drake in the air while it soars around trying to whip you off was something else.
You also have to approach each one with care and a plan to avoid being killed. They also require a specific method of damage before they are “harvestable”. This means I could extract the Weave Strand for it in order to upgrade my magic.
Harvesting these bosses makes for a good time. One specific creature saw me breaking off all of its armour shards while being tossed around the battlefield by its kinetic attacks. Another, I had to climb atop of its lantern helmet spitting fire to break the ornaments in order to expose the weak spot.
These fights have to be repeated a few times in Eternal Strands and each time I did them, I enjoyed them just as much. Sure, the first time I went into a fight it was a little intimidating, but trying to figure out how to unlock the harvest point was half the fun. You can, however, consult the codex which provides insight into the method.
So far it all sounds positive and it mostly is. Eternal Strands is a good game but it isn’t perfect. I did have some gripes. Mostly around exploration. While the locations are enjoyable to explore, they do start to feel the same after a while. You can smash boxes and pick up materials for only so long before it all starts to blend together.
General combat outside of the boss fights also feels underwhelming at times. Enemies can be spam-locked and defeated quite easily by tossing a massive boulder at them. You can also pick them up and toss them off a ledge once you have upgraded the Weave ability.
Brynn also feels “floaty” at times. There were countless times when I would perform a combo only to have her fly off the edge of a cliff to her death. The game also screws you over in this case by forfeiting most of the materials you found during that run in that location.
I actually never died once in Eternal Strands to actual enemy damage and “the challenge”. All my deaths were by cumbersome combat and at times, Brynn not gripping onto a surface when leaping across a gap. These deaths are incredibly frustrating. Especially after spending an hour exploring, smashing boxes, and gathering materials.
Quests can also start to feel like fetch and carry nonsense after a while too. Often, I would feel like I was in a daze travelling from one area to the next searching for a piece of paper, only to move to another area and do the same thing. It can all get a little tedious after a while.
With that being said, I did enjoy Eternal Strands. After 35+ hours with the game, I am determined to go back and clean up quests, craft all the missing gear, and finish up the codex. Not because I really care about the world so much, but I think Yellow Brick Games has done a tremendous job here. Enough to warrant a 100% completion. There’s also a joy the game provides thanks to its satisfying progression system combined with its enjoyable boss fights. It is hard to say no to the “one more run” through each area.
This review of Eternal Strands is based on a PS5 version sent to us by Yellow Brick Games. The game is out on 28 February for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. There is a demo available on PC and Xbox now.
Eternal Strands Review
Summary
Yellow Brick Games has done a tremendous job bringing the world of Eternal Strands to life. It blends deep storytelling, exploration and enjoyable boss fights together to deliver a game that is worth the asking price and your time.