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Eternal Strands is simply an epic action RPG that instantly gives you vibes of Zelda TOTK and Immortals Phoenix Rising but doesn’t stop there in taking inspiration. With colossal battles similiar to Horizon Forbidden West but only this time you’re packed with Magic, Alchemy and Enchanted Weapons.

Developed and Published by Yellow Brick Games, Eternal Strands was released on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation on January 28, 2024. Here’s our official review by Gameffine for Eternal Strands.

The Weaver of Magic

Games which tend to start with a dragon as a boss fight, tend to be more successful than others. While I may not have solid proof to back this statement, it was pretty cool to write the opening of this review. And yes, that’s exactly how I felt with the game as well.

Eternal Stands Review Gameffine

Thrown in front of a maddening drake (Dragon of this game), you are only equipped with one magic style and barebones weaponry. In a quick turn of events, your entire caravan is being flooded by a dense fog of mana that brings death. But luck works mysteriously, your protagonist accidentally wakes up an ark, which constructs a barrier through the storm, but also leads you into a forbidden city, with barricaded walls and no touch with the outside for years.

And that’s it, a group with a leader, operations manager, magic weaver, lore keeper, weapon smith and you, the warrior takes on this newly found land, riddled with great enemies, and arks went berserk. An action RPG with sandbox combat starting as a Roguelike opening? Well, it almost hit the nail.

Before we break down what works in the game, and what does not. Let us focus on what makes this game easily better than some major releases in the past year.

Putting Hogwarts to Shame

Do you remember some of your friends who went to expensive universities only to start working under that undergrad dropout kid, who excelled at his work? Well, your protagonist ‘Brynn’ carries the same kind of craft.

I thought that just like any other soul or an RPG with higher difficulty would want me to focus on combat, parry and dodge, but it’s quite the opposite. That does not mean that I cannot carry on in the game by simply focusing on combat without magic, I can! But once I understood how magic works, I felt I was in Minecraft all over again.

If a dragon is raining wrathful flames from the skies all around, setting ablaze the trees and bushes on fire, making it even tougher for you to run and stand still, what can you possibly do? This was my frustrated self thinking with a shield and a sword. But then I suddenly remembered about my frost powers.

I froze the dragon’s wings mid-air and he plummeted into the ground, faster than the meteors responsible for making dinosaurs extinct from our earth. Enemies 40 the size of your character tremble in fear in front of your wildly overpowered character (if used right). Even if you’re encountering generic enemies in front of you, the easiest approach is to meet them off the map. Why waste time, tanking armoured enemies, when you can jail them by freezing, burning or simply launching them to the next region?

Incredible scenarios apart, Eternal Strands offers an amazing format of combat, that is mostly sandbox for you. There are ample environmental objects that can be used for more damage – blunt or elemental. You can easily merge your magic, lobbing projectiles, or turning back enemy attacks to themself. Brynn utilizes 3 elements – Kinetic, Frost and Fire. Each element with three of its styles. From summoning an overpowered minion to building bridges, and pillars, arresting enemies or helping yourself through fires, the scale of its utilization is incredible.

Beating bosses does not even require you to bring them down to zero HP. Each boss is powered by an elemental strand, that you can harvest if you follow crucial steps for each great foe. After your first encounter, your group generously researches and finds you the exact steps to do so as well. For the first time, I feel value being added to my firepower with a roster not directly involved.

Also speaking for the overall look and feel of the game, it’s an absolute masterpiece. If you’ve played Fortnite: Save the World on EPIC graphics, you know how much better the game looked with the kind of atmospheric effects using the prowess of the unreal engine. Eternal strands simply blows my mind with how it looks, how the river shines through extreme weather and how my magic changes the colour of the entire battlefield. The atmospheric music and audio are also done incredibly well, making this a perfect RPG experience that I gladly sank a lot of hours into.

Eternal Strands is one of the better RPGs to release this year. The magic has found a place in my heart, and I can’t get over the game.

But it has its flaws that I want to overlook, but it’s too tough not to.

Fumbling into their Strands

Now that you might have a brief idea on why this game is exceptionally well at what it does, it’s the right time to address what makes me want bang my head against a wall.

The Quest design and lore is a classic Ubisoft, which should have stopped a decade ago. There is only one thing that is what Ubisoft does, which is that the Map does not have markers. But if it did, it could be simply filled with outrageous amounts of codex pages, with way too beefy paragraphs that are simply tiresome to read after a while.

For the first 40% of the game, your character is powerless, has no inventory space, and lacks a basic idea of what to do. The characters and side quests are simply too random at the start to make heads or tails off, but even when you do start understanding stuff, you’re constantly struggling because the enemy will attack you even if you’re throwing combos of slashes at them. It took me half the game to understand the timing of parries, but at the start, being powerless sucked.

Also, for the first 40% of the game, you are simply going on errands to fetch items, report back, and go fetch again. And I’m already incredibly bored at this point because I just won a battle against a great foe with minimum magic, low armour, and 2 health potions. And now I have to go there again to fetch another item.

The sorrow goes away eventually, but this could have been easily avoided with basic powers unlocked at the start, and being massively upgraded as beasts were taken down. Oh and speaking of taking down beasts?

You are supposed to take down each of the 9 great foes, thrice. But that is not enough, because some side missions will randomly ask you to do it again. Which stops being fun after annihilating them 25 times.

I want to do side quests, but now that I’ve progressed so far, one of my very early sidequests wants the hides of a particular beast that is nowhere to be found and has been replaced by an upgraded frost hound, which is not equivalent for the quest to complete.

Overall, Eternal Strands is in shambles when we speak of the story that fails to grab my attention even after 26 hours. I simply want to see the end, to see my effort’s final results. But truly I want freedom from being a courier guy, which I can happily be in Death Stranding.

Verdict

Eternal Strands shines to be one of the most interesting RPGs with an insane amount of attention towards its design, combat, magic and great enemies. But at the same time, misses the target for their overly buffed storyline and outrageously lengthy quests. The latter part of the game is where you tend to have a lot of fun, so if you’re picking this title, make sure to stick around.

Eternal Stand also comes at solid regional pricing and is a great pick for the current pricing at ₹1,600 for almost 30 hours of content.

Eternal Stands Review - Gameffine

Eternal Strands Review
77 100 0 1
Eternal Strands stands out to be an amazing RPG starring Brynn and her caravan. Using masterful magic and raw strength, take on lands filled with enemies and collossal foes.
Eternal Strands shines to be one of the most interesting RPGs with an insane amount of attention towards its design, combat, magic and great enemies. But at the same time, misses the target for their overly buffed storyline and outrageously lengthy quests. The latter part of the game is where you tend to have a lot of fun, so if you're picking this title, make sure to stick around.
77/100
Total Score iEternal Strands
  • Visuals
    100/100 The best
  • Combat and Mechanics
    95/100 The best
  • Story and Quest Design
    35/100 Passably

The Good

  • Groundbreaking Visuals
  • Perfectly Priced
  • Versatile Utilization of Magic and Combat

The Bad

  • Poorly Designed Quests
  • Lore lacks Hook
  • Fun Mechanics Locked to Latter Half of the Game
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