Eternal Strands | Review

Physically Dynamic

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris January 27, 2025Last Updated: January 27, 2025

1 2,140 7 minutes read

Eternal Strands is coming to Game Pass on Day One and it is a fantastic debut for Yellow Brick Games. Part Zelda, part Monster Hunter, it’s a physics and thermophysics-powered action title. You’re the Point, going on expeditions to lead your band of Weavers (magic-users) into long-lost lands. To do so you’ll fling, set on fire, and freeze your enemies as you hack/slash/climb your way across 24+ hours of gameplay. I fear this new IP from a new developer getting lost in the crush that is 2025’s early release slate, so let’s get into the nitty-gritty of why I think Eternal Strands is worth checking out.

Weaving a Tale

The game begins with your character Brynn joining a band of travelers heading to the Veil. It’s a deadly magical protection field covering the area that Weavers used to call home. After some shenanigans, you end up inside this magical dome and settle in a home base in its former capital city.

There are politics, delicate friendships to balance, and a lot of visual novel-style dialogue-heavy cutscenes in Eternal Strands. You can skip all of it if you choose, but I found the story engaging enough to make sure I at least read everything. The voice acting was solid, with writing that felt natural enough while trying to build up this new world and the mythos surrounding it all.

While you can make dialogue choices the game makes it clear that they only add different flavors. The events stay the same no matter what you choose in the end. Quests tend to stick to the tried and true “fetch” variety, with Brynn heading out to areas over and over again to find items for her companions. This is the main leveling mechanic as well.

Monster Hunting

Eternal Strands’ gameplay loop sees you heading out to zones attempting to unlock the various teleportation hubs early on. Once you’ve got that loop setup, you’ll unlock the ability to teleport back to base whenever you want, with a short cast time keeping it from being easily spammed. The only penalty for death is losing all but a few of the items you have collected on your current trip.

The title has a day/night cycle, with days being counted over time. I reached Day 23 by the time I had credits roll. I don’t think this ties into the story in any way and is just there as another stat to keep track of for funsies. There are a handful of different items to collect with which you will craft your gear. This is the main leveling system as the higher-tiered items create more powerful and protective gear.

Like all modern games, there is a colored rarity in the UI to let you know how powerful something is by default, matched with a star system. By the end of my run, the same weapons I had been using the entire game went from doing 50 damage up to 150. This is no Diablo, that 100 power increase meant a ton when it came to tackling regular enemies and bosses. You’ll need to keep your armor and resistance numbers rising as well. Your gear slots for weaponry are: Sword & Shield, Bow, and Two-Hander. For armor, you have: Helm, Chest, Gauntlets, and Greaves. To craft each you’ll need to find the various recipes in each zone. Once you have the recipes you’ll use a mix of types of ingredients, these include: Tanned, Forged, Carved, and Woven resources. Each type can be found on expeditions as you break rocks/trees, kill animals, and defeat bosses.

The types of items you get and their rarity is influenced by something being frozen or set on fire. Burn a dog to death and you’ll get better quality leather but no fur. Freeze that doggie and your chances of getting rare fur skyrocket, etc. It’s a fun system that seems overwhelming at first but is simple to use in practice.

Magic is Might

Magic is a major focus of Eternal Strands, and your trips out into the wilds will see you facing three kinds of it. There’s heat, cold, and miasma. The first two are exactly what you’d think, fire and ice. Miasma is raw magic that is deadly to anything that touches it for too long. Your character has a Mantle, which allows you to weave magic through Strands of energy.

These Strands are harvested from the major enemies in each zone. There’s one active at a time and they change depending on the day, seemingly in a randomized pattern once you’ve defeated them for the first time. There are nine Strands/powers in total, with Brynn knowing two at the start. You can level each to three tiers of strength and they are the star of the game.

The first time you defeat an Ark or Boss Creature you’ll get their strand. Every subsequent kill will have a different way to harvest upgrades for it. How to harvest can be figured out via your codex and helped keep the gameplay fresh far longer than it would have otherwise. Tossing rocks, setting the ground on fire, and donning magical ice armor is a lot of fun but the enemy variety isn’t that high. Thankfully, the base movement and combat are solid enough to keep things fun for an entire playthrough.

Tar-Brynn of the Jungle

The physics and thermophysics parts of Eternal Strands are supported by a climb-anywhere traversal system. Brynn must be part Spider-Man because she can stick to walls and climb with more stamina than Link could dream of. Early on the game is pretty flat, as the focus is on teaching combat and magic mechanics. Once you reach the city areas it becomes an urban playground of platforming.

X is your basic attack, Y interacts with objects and starts you climbing. B is an i-frames full dodge, and A is for jumping. All of this works off of a generous stamina meter. If you use it all Brynn needs a moment to catch her breath and then it’s all back. Stamina is key for boss encounters where you’ll go full-on Dragon’s Dogma, climbing your foes to hit them in key areas.

Each of your three weapons has a magically imbued attack. What type depends on what you’ve crafted but they’ll always be either Kinetic, Fire, or Ice based. Brynn always has access to her Sword & Shield, Bow, and Two-Hander once each has been crafted. With the fire and ice system, I found having one weapon be fire and one ice worked best until I had unlocked enough magical abilities to have each covered without worry.

Eternal Strands is a physics and thermophysics sandbox action game. Using your powers to fling the environment at enemies never grows old. As you upgrade each ability you feel that power ramping up, and it is damned satisfying. Base enemies never become “stronger” though more powerful variants will show up as you progress through the main campaign. There are nine “Great Foes” who are the bosses mentioned earlier. While it isn’t a massive Monster Hunter amount, this is the first game in a new IP. The variety of locations, weapons, and enemy types is damned good vs. the title’s runtime.

(un)Really Pretty

Eternal Strands runs on Unreal Engine. It both looked and ran well on my Xbox Series X & PC. This is a Game Pass/Play Anywhere title, letting you jump between console and computer without issue. I primarily played on Xbox early on, switching to my PC later because it was so damned smooth at 120fps.

Xbox has no graphical modes, opting for a focus on a 60fps target that I never noticed it dipping from. The title goes for a more painterly, stylized look in gameplay. Cutscenes are mostly visual novel-style character drawings, with the occasional 3D render mixed in. The most important ones are fully animated cutscenes with a basic but visually arresting style.

A lot is going on during fights with physics, flames, and ice changing the environment constantly. It never chugged, nor did the physics break on me at any point. It’s a huge accomplishment to have all of this background math going on for the temperature and density of items being constantly calculated without any major performance issues or bugs.

Eternal Strands is the type of title, visually, that will stand the test of time. Nothing looks cheap, nor does it look expensive. Instead, you see a vision of what the creators wanted fully realized. It’s visually cohesive, with a UI that never gets in the way or too busy. The action on screen has enough going on that it helps to never feel inundated with extraneous info for the sake of making things prettier.

Sound, Story, and Bugs

Music and Voice Acting are two of the most important parts of a game to me. While the latter can be ignored if you’re the type to skip every cutscene the former can’t. Music sets the mood and Austin Wintory’s OST is a perfect compliment to the on-screen action. Whether it’s a touching cutscene or a bombastic boss fight the music helps to enhance the emotional stakes.

If, like me, story matters for you in games then I’m happy to say that the English voice cast is excellent. While some plotlines feel a bit rushed I never got the sense that a line was being phoned in. Each performance matches the look and feel of its on-screen counterpart.

Bug-wise the game was mostly perfect with a few issues tied to the PC version of the game. While I had no problems on my Lenovo Legion Go I simply could not get a controller to work on the desktop version. It’s the type of thing that could be entirely on my Windows install, but I won’t know until it’s out for others to try. Besides that one oddity, it only had a single crash on Xbox, and the version I played was lacking the Day One patch you should have when reading this.

My only issue with Eternal Strands was that it was a bit too long. I beat it in roughly 26 hours with the majority of the latter third being constant short trips to fetch items. If they had lopped off a handful of hours I think the pacing would have kept up better with the amount of variety on offer.

Wrapping Things Up

Eternal Strands is a fantastic first title from Yellow Brick Games. It’s an IP I hope to see more of in the future, as its excellent gameplay felt like a breath of fresh air for the genre. It’s out Day One on Game Pass and even in this bloated 2025 release schedule I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out no matter where you play.