Eternal Strands (2025)

This is an amazing showing for brand new studio Yellow Brick. They came out with a debut game that is a great success and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

The art style really shines here, particularly in environment and creature design. And, while the mixing of 3D and 2D art isn't for everyone, I quite enjoyed it. The 2D art for conversations was wonderful. And the few anime-style cut scenes were very well done and I think a smart move for a new studio as it was certainly a cheaper route than trying to do 3D action cut scenes. It also was a chance to show off more of said art.

There's a great gameplay loop of going out on an expedition to gather resources and advance missions, then coming back to the camp to talk to people, upgrade gear, and go back out to do it again. Honestly, I quite liked the crafting system, which I've only ever said about one other game. You get to pick the materials to use in order to completely customize how you want your gear to work for you. And, the best part is you won't lose materials if you decide to switch things up - all your materials will be returned to you.

The combat felt really great. There was a good variety of enemies with an added layer of shifting weather and time of day helping to mix up the zones. The only jank to it was the climbing of enemies wasn't always smooth. But the novelty of being able to climb giant creatures in video games, and do it relatively well, is enough to look past it. Each of the Great Foes has their own methods of beating them, and figuring out the tricks to it is all part of the fun.

What really shined for me was the story and the characters. The storyline is part adventure, part mystery, as you try to figure out what has happened. You also build relationships with your friends, and encounter really deep and meaningful stories therein.

I hope to see more from Yellow Brick, whether it's more of this universe or something completely new.

Some smart design choices in how it handles loot and crafting mean that every interaction feels useful. Those interactions involve smashing enemies and the environment in an impressively kinetic sandbox, slurping up the spoils, and clambering on colossal roaming creatures, so its moment-to-moment is also freewheeling, cathartic fun.

It's a bit twee, a bit generic-looking, at least at first glance, but very amiable, as are its story, world, and characters.

The game's limitations and inspirations are so clear, and it doesn't overcome or escape either, respectively, but it does create something compelling and unique in spite of them.

Wow, I haven't played anything on Xbox's GamePass streaming platform in a while because most games I'm playing can be accessed via PC GamePass through GeForce Now. I wasn't quite prepared for how much poorer quality Game Pass streaming is than GeForce Now because I haven't done a direct comparison in some time.

• GamePass streaming seems to limit itself to about 10-12Mbps, with no option to adjust this. This is much much lower than GeForce Now which has a fully adjustable bandwidth slider from 5Mbps all the way up to 75Mbps if your connection can support it. I've never needed anywhere near 75Mbps, but I usually have GeForce Now around 30Mbps which tends to make for a very nice smooth streaming experience.
• There is quite a lot of compression artifacts, especially when panning the camera. I don't recall Game Pass streaming exhibiting this before, but Xbox seems to have removed the "boost clarity" button, which I believe did increase the Mbps throughput.

The Xbox version of Eternal Strands is also suffers from a significant visual downgrade from PC.

• The only graphical settings option available it to toggle depth of field on Xbox. There is not graphics or performance mode.
• Even at 1080p, texture quality is exceptionally low.
• Shadow quality is set to low with a great deal of dithering visible. Shadows are also very chunky. The Xbox might have a custom shadow setting because I didn't notice huge differences in shadow quality on PC between the lowest and highest setting. High quality shadows tended to exhibit better blending and more natural edges, but low wasn't particularly bad. On Xbox the shadows appear to be lower than the lowest setting on PC, which is surprising because I didn't think this was a particularly taxing game.
• I don't think either the texture issue or shadow issue is related to streaming or bandwidth because all the prerendered visuals such as the illustrated dialogue scenes and menus are nice and crisp.
• Why is Field of View a PC only variable setting? Why can't console players have FoV control? Not only can adjusting FoV alleviate motion sickness for some, some games feel way too zoomed in. I immediately increased the FoV for this game on PC, which gave me much better situational awareness. Playing on console without FoV feels like a punishment.

I don't really care much about fidelity, especially in a game that is as visually abstracted from realism as Eternal Strands is, but there's such a steep drop in texture and shadow quality on the Series X version of this game that I really feel like console players are getting a raw deal. That, plus the absence of a FoV setting would make it really hard for me to recommend this to console players. Which is too bad, because despite its wonky physics and the odd flaw, I do like this game. But it's obvious console players get the worst version of Eternal Strands and I don't know how that won't hurt its popularity.

There’s a large enemy, one of what the game calls Arkons, that is such a pain in the ass that it’s bringing my feelings about the game down. Not because it’s hard to beat. Not at all. If you want to defeat the enemy you can do it in your sleep. Rather, it’s because in order to farm it for an important element, you have to bait it into chasing you around so that it can do this one specific attack to reveal four weak spots. You then have to destroy those weak spots to reveal a final weak spot that you can harvest for the needed resource. Sounds simple enough and not anything to really complain about, right?

The problem is that the four initial weak spots have some of the worst, i.e., smallest, hit boxes in the game. That coupled with I’ll admit, despite my enjoyment of the game, are some wonky climbing physics and camera angles make the weak spots annoying to target. You have a small window to destroy the weak spots before they disappear. If they disappear you have to kite the enemy around the map starts again. If you only destroy one weak spot each time you have to kite the Arkon four times. Lord help you if you fail to destroy one, and have to encourage it to chase you for additional rounds.

Why? Because it’s honestly dullest thing in the game. The loop consists of the Armon chasing you for a couple minutes, followed by raging out and then chasing you a bit swifter for a couple more minutes. If you’re not trying to harvest elements from the Arkon, you can kill it in the time it takes to make one loop. But if you need to harvest it (which you do) you’ll have to endure basically doing nothing but running in a circle for twenty minutes.

Well now, this game starts with a narrative about a magical city/nation called The Enclave that was a thriving location of all magic users and a central hub for the rest of the world before an arcane disaster, called The Surge, cause the Enclave to seal themselves away from the rest of the world behind The Veil. In the resulting destabilization, the remaining nations were plunged into a series of decade long wars. At the end of the war, magic users were shunned, blamed for The Surge, the ensuing unrest and the wars. Weavers, magic users, are similarly shunned and have to carefully navigate the world giving the average person's hatred for them.

After making my way through that opening description, I really needed to look into the devs that made this game. Turns out it's made by a bunch of Canadian devs under the leadership of Mike Laidlaw, former Dragon Age creative director. It shows, lol. So maybe this is the second "Dragon Age" game in so many months, if only in spirit.