Should you weave yourself into this story?
Play as Brynn, a young but fearless Weaver, determined to recover her people’s cultural home in the debut fantasy action-adventure title from Yellow Brick Games, a new independent studio founded by industry veterans. Armed with powerful magical abilities and an arsenal of magical weapons, face enemies that range from humanoid constructs to towering beasts. Use the environment and temperature to your advantage in battles against a diverse roster of fantastical creatures, like turning a dragon’s fiery breath against ice-covered minions. Climb every surface and use arcane skills to create new paths. Explore the world in pursuit of the Enclave’s lost mysteries and challenge giant titans on your journey.
Eternal Strands is an action-adventure RPG debut from Yellow Brick Games, which was co-founded by Mike Laidlaw who had previously worked on the Dragon Age series at BioWare. With “The Veilguard” not meeting expectations from fans in terms of sales and BioWare itself cutting staff or moving them all over to development for Mass Effect 5, it’s interesting to see how a new series by a former BioWare developer would pan out with this situation…
I personally have yet to play The Veilguard, but I do think the toxicity from gamers regarding any diversity was appalling and stupidly inconsistent. Dragon Age has included diversity and LGTBQ characters in past games, so why pick on Veilguard now? I’m getting side-tracked here, so let’s now focus on Eternal Strands…
It’s clear that while Dragon Age may have been an influence, Eternal Strands tries to do things in its own way. Combat is more reliant on using elements like fire and ice alongside traditional weapons, while interacting with the environment to make traps and pathways. The world itself isn’t fully open world, but still impressive in its distinct areas full of plenty of puzzles and key plot moments.
The story itself is decent, but the delivery for telling it is a bit of a mixed bag. Conversations aren’t done with characters in-game like Dragon Age, they are done with static images and text for dialogue which looks and feels out of place.
While its environments are impressive, there are some gameplay elements that do hold the game back. Combat can be fun, but it can also feel a bit janky at times, movement controls feel a bit clunky overall and the lack of a fast-travel system outside of certain areas is baffling and inconsistent.
Visually, the game looks great and while I can notice a few performance hiccups at times, I’m hopeful that a patch or two will improve things. The soundtrack is also impressive throughout.
The Verdict
Eternal Strands has potential, that’s for sure. With Dragon Age’s Mike Laidlaw at the helm, it’s hard for it not to. It may feel clunky, janky, static and at times, repetitive…but, for a studio’s debut game, there’s more good than bad here. And hopefully a sequel would address these issues and make it become a solid franchise going forward.