It’s very difficult for an indie studio to make large, complex 3D games that can last tens of hours, especially without resorting to procedural content generation. Eternal Strands was headed up in part by Mike Laidlaw, who directed the first three Dragon Age games. While this game can’t be said to be much like that series in most ways, its intense focus on fleshing out and spending time with its cast of characters felt very familiar, with an amount of writing that is simultaneously vast and very capably written. Certain aspects aren’t as finely honed as I would have liked, but overall, I found this to be an engrossing experience that sucked me in and compelled me to finish it very quickly, despite its generous amount of content.
The Surge spread chaos across The Mayda, originating from a place called The Enclave from behind The Veil, which went up and acts as a barrier that kept anyone from entering it due to the miasma tangles. Much of that isn’t going to make sense out of context, echoing how the first few hours of Eternal Strands feels. You play as Brynn, the acting “point” for a group of magical explorers called a Weaverband. An opening into The Enclave has presented itself, so the band headed in, only making it past the dense tangles of fatal magical energy, thanks to an automaton known as an Ark, which cancels magic. On the other side, the group gets more than they bargained for as they set out to unravel old mysteries.
There’s hours upon hours of dialogue in this game, all of it fully voiced by a mostly very talented cast of British voice actors that do a splendid job of bringing their characters to life. A lot of the dialogue is optional, although it can often be important for understanding the characters. You can even romance a couple of them (but not the one that I was most hoping would be an option.) I felt compelled to partake in absolutely every conversation I could. The characters can be a bit generic, but their personalities and beliefs are so well-thought-out that I couldn’t help but want to learn about them.
Eternal Strands was put together by a dev team of under 70 people and it’s often visually impressive. The worlds and visual effects look very nice, although there are very few cutscenes. Instead, most of the talking plays out in visual novel-style sequences with 2D character portraits. The basic gist is that you have a base camp that needs to be upgraded by finding loot of various values and then breaking it down into provisions. Days are split up into mornings, afternoons, and evenings, which see you venturing into several large areas to do both main and side quests as well as explore, acquire loot, and the like.
You’ll find armour and weapon schematics while exploring (and it took me 10 hours to notice that these were marked on the map with tiny hammer icons,) as you’ll need to craft everything Brynn uses from scratch. Enemies, chests, and objects in the world drop tonnes of loot that you’ll need to use to craft, but the way Eternal Strands handles loot is one of its more unique attributes. Initially, Brynn can only carry a certain amount of it. Once her inventory is full, you have to stop picking things up and return to your base to deposit your haul. However, if you lose all of your health or fall off a cliff while exploring, you’ll only be able to keep a select amount of your loot.
This changes as you purchase more upgrades, but it’s fairly rough in the early game, as you won’t be able to carry all that much. Upgrades will also allow you to carry more healing phials, as well as make better use of your companions. One improves your magic, another crafts your gear, etc. While you will find different armour sets, they all have different specialities. Some have better fire or ice protection, others offer more armour. I stuck with the highest armour set, which meant I wasn’t often upgrading gear. Weapons are a very different story, as you don’t find stronger ones, you just find variations with unique elemental powers.
Doing more damage or improving your defence in Eternal Strands relies on either crafting or enforcing your gear with higher-tier materials. It’s fairly novel and works well, although I didn’t like that I wasn’t frequently finding new gear to craft. Upgrading a gear piece’s level also isn’t really at all useful compared to simply swapping in higher-tier crafting components either. The game is practically obsessed with its ice, fire, and kinetic magic incorporation, though. The seven different locations have three types of weather that rotates depending on the time of day you check them. These leave them frozen, incredibly dry and prone to catching fire, or covered in miasma (clouds of purple) that harm you.
Therefore, picking locations calls your gear choices into question based on what the weather is. Ice is the most dangerous, as areas covered in it will slow Brynn down massively, which got me killed more than once. Fire isn’t nearly as dangerous, as it doesn’t slow you down, although that doesn’t mean it can’t lead to your ruin. But these tie into Brynn’s magic as well. She gets new magic from defeating a new great foe, in other words, giant enemies that are somewhat akin to the foes in Shadow of the Colossus or Monster Hunter. You’ll typically climb on them and attack weak points to bring them down.
The first time you beat most of these, you’ll be rewarded with a new magic ability, of which three are kinetic, three are fire, and three are ice. You simply lower a great foe’s health all the way to kill it and you get a new power. Upgrading these abilities requires you to find them again, break their weak points in a specific way to get a locus point to show, and then you’ll need to climb onto a glowing spot on their bodies to harvest their strands. It’s kind of insanely awesome and you’ll need to harvest two strands from them to upgrade your magic all the way. Some of the powers, such as the ice and kinetic mines, aren’t too useful, however. The last two powers, on the other hand, are incredibly useful.
The last of these shows up way too late, in my opinion, although I get why. During most of Eternal Strands, you have to walk absolutely everywhere. Brynn isn’t especially quick, so I often wondered about this. The game takes a bit of influence from Breath of the Wild early on, but there’s no hang-gliding or any way to speed up the pace for most of your playthrough. This last power lets you zoom around the maps and is incredibly fun to use, so it’s a shame you don’t max it out until you’ve beaten the game. Speaking of which, it took me 30 hours to see the credits and complete every side quest, so there’s a lot of content here.
Granted, most of the quests trot you out to the game’s seven explorable locations time and again, often to just grab something and come back. Some quests are more specific, but once you’ve thoroughly explored a location it can be kind of tiresome to pop back in just to grab something quickly and then warp back to camp. Combat helps alleviate this somewhat, but that aspect of the game isn’t great. You’ve got three weapons here – sword and shield, a bow, and a two-handed sword. Handling crowds (which you’ll often have to do) doesn’t always work well here, and the combat is on the clunky side.
Eternal Strands also has fairly finicky physics (be prepared to hit things and watch them get knocked further than they should,) that got on my nerves more often than not. Plus, the lock-on camera is inspired by Dark Souls, so it tends to aim at the ground when you get close to an enemy. The two swords work well enough, although the two-hander is significantly more useful than the sword and shield, but the latter lets you parry and stun enemies. Mixing the fight up with magic that can be combined evens the odds, too. Setting the game alight with fire is often handy, but the telekinesis ability that lets you chuck enemies off cliffs or stun them by tossing them is incredibly useful above all others.
Enemy variety isn’t bad, but it’s not enough for a game this long. Especially since the first five of seven areas mostly feature a lot of the same enemies, so it took way too long for the last two areas to introduce more. They’re okay to fight, but some of them border on cheap. This especially goes for the ice-based enemies, as you can easily get caught due to being slowed down. Granted, you have access to elemental phials that cancel out fire or ice damage, but you can only have a maximum of two of these. I do wish there had been another area or two as well.
Several hours before the end, I ran into what I assumed was the final boss, but then the game kept going. However, there weren’t any new areas, enemies, or great foes to be found. When you do fight the final boss, it’s pretty much exactly the same fight as the aforementioned one, albeit with one difference at the end. Once you beat the game, the only real final side quest it offers is to fight the final boss a third time. Though I did take some umbrage with how blatantly Eternal Strands can pad out its low-ish amount of variety, the conversations that you consistently unlock with your companions really do make it worthwhile.
Overall, Eternal Strands is greater than the sum of its parts. Individually, many of its elements aren’t too impressive, but it’s rare for me to feel the need to try and do and see everything I can. Seriously, I was given plenty of time to play this game ahead of release and I still found myself not wanting to do anything but play it all day. There are honestly few greater compliments I can pay a game, so even though the combat and lack of variety did wear on me, I still had a pretty terrific time and think people that value creativity and quality of writing will enjoy it the most.
Eternal Strands: Lacking in variety and featuring combat that doesn't excel at anything, Eternal Strands makes up for all of that with excellent writing, a great cast of characters, and a world that made me obsessively loot for 30 hours. – Andrew Farrell
Check out our previous review:
Butcher’s Creek PC review – We are all dead meat |
