Eternal Strands

My first impression of Eternal Strands was that someone had let a team of seasoned RPG veterans loose with a single mandate: make the world feel alive. Led by former Dragon Age director Mike Laidlaw, Yellow Brick Games built their debut around a physics engine where temperature is a weapon. Fire spreads through vegetation, ice creates traversal bridges mid-combat, and Brynn's magical cloak, the Mantle, lets you channel flame, frost, and telekinetic force in ways that interact with the environment rather than just the enemy health bar. Hurling a burning log at a frozen construct, then watching the fire cascade into nearby grass while the enemy scrambles? That works, and it works consistently. The core fantasy of feeling like a physics-wielding superhero lands more often than it doesn't. The game is structured not as an open world but as a series of crafted open zones, each with distinct biomes, enemy types, and materials to scavenge. That design choice was apparently made because simulating full thermal physics across a seamless 25-kilometer map wasn't feasible, and the honesty shows in the result. Areas feel purposeful rather than padded. You return to zones as quests and crafting needs pull you back, echoing Monster Hunter's loop more than any modern bloat-world. Brynn carries three weapon archetypes, sword and shield, two-hander, and bow, and you build them around fire, ice, or kinetic elemental affinity. The real depth comes from combining Mantle abilities with the weapon's element and the environmental state of any given arena. Pulling materials from defeated large creatures and feeding them into a crafting system that uses thermodynamic logic (yes, really) adds a satisfying layer for upgrade hunters. The colossal boss fights are the undisputed highlight. Climbing towering arcs and constructs, identifying weak points, using ice to pin a limb or fire to strip fur, these encounters drew favorable comparisons to Shadow of the Colossus from more than one critic, and the praise is earned. Against the big stuff, every system clicks. Against the smaller, routine enemies, less so. Melee combat can feel sluggish, magic targeting has noticeable input lag, and some reviewers flagged the limited inventory alongside material loss on death as friction that adds hassle rather than stakes. A post-launch Story Mode difficulty and several quality-of-life patches have addressed some of the rougher edges, and the studio has continued to update the game with crossover content, showing genuine post-launch commitment. Performance on PC is solid, running on Unreal Engine 5. The story follows Brynn and her weaverband into the sealed city of the Enclave, unraveling what happened during a magical catastrophe. Character writing and companion dynamics are the stronger narrative suit, the central plot resolves to familiar fantasy tropes, but the hub crew gives you actual reasons to care. Runtime lands in the 25-35 hour range for the main path, up to 40 with side content, which keeps the experience tight rather than exhausting. This is not a game that outstays its welcome. For players who prize the feeling of creatively solving fights over mechanical polish, and who can tolerate some clunk in exchange for genuinely emergent moments, Eternal Strands delivers something most big-budget games are too cautious to attempt.

Alex · Scout Team

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