When you hear about a new fantasy RPG from the Creative Director of Dragon Age, you pay attention.

Despite it coming from a studio you’ve never heard of, at a time packed with new releases, set in a world you’ve never visited before, Eternal Strands could just be one of the most interesting newly built fantasy worlds since…well….Dragon Age.

Made all the more accessible by going straight into Xbox Game Pass, Eternal Strands sees you play as a Weaver named Brynn, a young, inexperienced warrior who is infused with magical abilities, sharp weapons, and a vast environment to use as you see fit. And this is immediately what makes the game stand out.

While its narrative feels a tad hard to follow and cliche to start with, and the gameplay systems take a moment to get to grips with, it’s the gameplay flow that will really suck you in at first. Beautifully combining your magical skills to pick up enemies and shove them away with a Jedi Force like Push.

You can also freeze your enemies to the spot, encasing them in a cage of ice and pepper them with arrows from afar. Or, you can do absolutely none of that and go for traditional hand to hand swordplay.

Whatever you fancy doing, Eternal Strards feels different and the synergies can be really fun to experiment with. You can make use of the environment, throwing explosives at enemies, chuck them off a cliff, use them against each other. In that sense, the game can stay fresh, though you do find yourself going back to what works. It’s ambitious for a game to try so many different things and for the most part, it really works.

It gets more interesting still as well, when you climb up these mechanical esque giants, hacking off their armor to get at their weak spots and then gaining new powers for the priviledge. An RPG with halmarks of Shadow of the Colosseus is money in my book.

And it’s this combat that makes this game stand out from any other number of RPGs you may have played over the years. The bold experimentation that it offers, but equally the unapologetic difficulty that forces you to pay attention and keep your head in the game. Not least because when you die, only a handful of the resources you’ve collected can come back with you. There’s a penalty for these things and you need to be prepared for it.

This might be what loses some people in that Eternal Strands isn’t like your conventional RPG. You have to convert items into resources to level up your village and can only reinforce and upgrade your equipment unless you get the luck of the drop from a mob.

Traversal also isn’t the easiest until you start unlocking the Loomgates, making you wade through treacherous terrain and all forms of ravenous creatures without the usual waypoints, forcing you through some open areas. Shortcuts do gradually unlock to help and you’ll always have the sanctuary and camp to return to, but it does not come easily to you and you’ll be surprised how quickly you can burn through your vitality potions.

Eternal Strands really does try to do things differently with live combat, giving you the option to climb surfaces – as well as golems – and a day and night system – giving the game a bit of a Breath of the Wild vibe as well. Yellow Brick Games are trying to break new ground with the game and the genre as a whole, visually, narratively, and mechanically.

It’s even more impressive when you realise how small the studio is as well, just a small team of single digits. And when you consider the narrative weighs up alongside many of the bigger AAA games of the last few years with a voice cast that really breathe life into their characters. There’s scale, depth and scope here that can kickstart a franchise and hopefully provide runway for a bright future for the studio. That said, the quests are quite predictable and mostly bogged down with fetch quests which see you go back and forth more regularly than you might like.

Eternal Strards is a bit janky at parts. Your character will often get stuck in the environment, traversal is frustrating and the challenge can be frustrating at points. Dialogue choices, while they are varied, don’t have too much weight behind them in the wider story for the most part, and the dialogue screens feel a bit too simplified compared to the rest of the game, but this game is a real delightful surprise.

Eternal Strards is a solid game that has its imperfections as much as it has his reasons for enjoyment. It will divide people and definitely take some getting used to, but with a healthy, generous demo available and the game freely available in Xbox Game Pass, there’s plenty of reasons to check it out and we’d definitely recomend you give it a chance.

Verdict

Eternal Strands is an enjoyable RPG with some fantastic ideas and bold ambition. Filled with compelling story, spirited voice acting and really fun combat system, you’ll find yourself swept up in its charms sooner than you expect. Despite some bugs, performance issues and tedious quests and traversal, this is an exciting starting point for a young studio and leaves potential for a franchise that has plenty of room to grow.