Eternal Strands review

These days it’s hard to predict exactly what kind of cache you’ll get for announcing that a game is from ex-Dragon Age: Origins developers. Origins was released a long time ago, and every Dragon Age game since – including last year’s Veilguard – has only been met with highly qualified praise. But something about Eternal Strands caught my eye early on. Perhaps its the fact that it looks very similar to Kingdoms of Amalur at a glance – a game that will always have a bed in my spare room. Or it might be that it has elements borrowed from Breath of the Wild and Immortals: Fenyx Rising, or that there’s an air of AA ambition about it that I always find really easy to get behind. Whatever the reason, Eternal Strands got my attention when it was first announced, and I’m glad it did.

In it, you play Brynn, the primary warrior among a mercenary group made up of archaeologists, adventurers and magic-users, who find themselves in a decaying deadly world in the aftermath of a magic-slash-scientific apocalypse. Each one is a “Weaver”, a persecuted magic user who just wants to survive a hostile world that wants them dead. It’s your job to go out into that world and find “Loomgates”, fast travel points that connect every major area of the world, as well as Arks. These are huge constructs that contain rare resources that your little troop needs.

It’s fighting these Arks that gives the story much of its drive. You climb them with a BotW-style stamina mechanic, smashing off sections of their armour to deal damage as they grab at you and try to shake you off. You’ll need stronger and stronger gear to prevail against them, which necessitates exploration and gathering. Resources come from a variety of places, such as boxes and bags, enemy drops, and treasure chests.

You’ll need to bring back what you can, which can either be used to craft or upgrade Brynn’s armour and weapons, or be converted to camp supplies. These supplies are used to upgrade your team’s various services, such as Sofia’s forge or Casmyn’s caravan. These upgrades in turn allow you to get stronger, or extract more items if you die. Upon death you’ll be teleported back to the camp, but you can only save a limited number of resources each time you do.

Combat has a couple of facets. First, Brynn can choose between her sword and shield, a two-handed weapon, and a bow. Counter-intuitively, these aren’t simply mapped to buttons, but must be selected via a radial menu each time you want to switch. It feels almost old-fashioned, and there’s no real reason this couldn’t have been smoother and simpler. It means you’ll need to either chase an enemy or go into a menu to get your bow out when they run away, and a lot of enemies will flee when you deal damage.

The enemies themselves don’t feel too creative, either, and fighting does begin to feel like a slog on longer expeditions. You can lock on and parry, but sometimes it feels floaty and unresponsive. Enemy HP is also inconsistent, while certain enemies like the Darters who turn invisible and spit poison at you are more frustrating than anything.

Luckily, Brynn is a Weaver, and possesses some magic abilities, too. You’ll unlock more and more powers as you go, beginning with Kinetic and Frost skills. You can freeze enemies in blocks of ice, or pick them up and throw them at one another. You’ll also use Brynn’s powers to overcome obstacles, such as clearing debris or putting out fires. Spells are weaved into the fabric of her Mantle, which changes colour and pattern depending on which spell you have equipped.

Gear crafting is interesting, too, as you will often have a choice of which materials to use and they will bestow different stats and appearances on it. Sofia may just ask for a “carved resource” for example, which can be any kind of wood or bark. It means you could craft multiple versions of an armour set for different occasions – though you likely won’t need to go as far as build-crafting here.

Eternal Strand’s story is pretty well told, but much of it hinges on the characters – most of whom I really liked. Where it struggles is in the presentation of the story and characters, as it seems inconsistent at best. Sometimes you’ll get a fully animated cutscene, sometimes a stylised cartoon that only feels a few steps up from just giving us static images. I really didn’t like the style used in these sequences, as it just felt weirdly unfinished and the characters appeared with way less detail than the rest of the game. During dialogue, you’ll often just see static images of the characters. Each is fully voiced though, which helps their personalities come through.

So what you have here is a smaller, more focused version of Immortals: Fenyx Rising. The world isn’t open but it is connected, and there’s less variety in enemies and items, but that just feels more streamlined. Fighting the Arks as you hang off them is always pretty exhilarating, even if there’s a certain amount of jank going on at any given time.

Like Atlas Fallen from 2023, Eternal Strands feels like a double-A doing its best to fit in at a triple-A party, and that’s not a criticism. It may suffer from some wobbly mechanics here and there, but the ambition is clear and a lot of it works. Fighting a dragon amidst a crumbling village in the middle of a swamp was an early highlight, as the dragon obliterated everything I tried to hide behind and I was forced to ride the damn thing more than once, or try to pin it to the ground with reams of ice. If you don’t mind a few frayed ends and you’re in the mood for a charming adventure through a gorgeous fantasy world, Eternal Strands is worth checking out.