Oh, Eternal Strands, what a tangled web you’ve woven – one that feels more like a tripwire than an enchanting adventure. When I found out last night that a Demo for the upcoming Eternal Strands game would hit Steam today, I was on it like a rash.
This demo promised to tease us with glimpses of grandeur ahead of the full release on the 28th. Instead, it felt more like an amateur magician’s botched card trick: you see what they’re going for, but you’re too busy cringing to enjoy it.
What Is Eternal Strands?
For those who don’t know, Eternal Strands is an ambitious action-adventure RPG from Yellow Brick Games, a studio helmed by BioWare veteran Mike Laidlaw, best known for his work on the Dragon Age series.
The game promises an expansive world of magic, combat, and exploration. Players are thrust into The Enclave, a mystical land under siege by shadowy forces, and must wield a combination of weapons and elemental magic to fight back.
The story explores themes of destiny, sacrifice, and the bonds that tie us together, with a crafting system and base-building elements thrown in for good measure.
It sounds like a dream project on paper—a mix of Hogwarts Legacy meets Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. In practice? Well, we’ll get to that.
A World That’s Pretty but Painful to Explore
The demo grants you access to two areas of The Enclave and introduces you to three types of enemies, aka Epics. Now, let me say that the word Epic is very ironic here because these fights feel as epic as trying to assemble flat-pack furniture without instructions.
There’s no satisfying crunch when your attacks land, no recoil on enemies, and combat’s overall weightlessness leaves you yearning for the glory days of Dark Souls parries or even Minecraft sword-swinging.
Magic, the supposed cornerstone of this action-adventure RPG, is even worse. It’s less like Hogwarts and more like, well, Hogsmeade on a bad day. Aiming ice spells is an exercise in frustration, and trying to build an ice path during the tutorial is so unintuitive you might as well just run through the flames and hope for the best.
Speaking about running, movement is another misstep. Your character turns with the grace of a cement mixer, and running as a whole feels clunky.
A Few Shiny Gems Among the Rubble
Now, before you think this is an unrelenting roast or that I didn’t have my daily dose of caffeinated joy today, let me be fair. The world design? Gorgeous. The story? Intriguing. And the voice acting? It’s solid enough to make you wonder why the rest of the experience doesn’t match up. Even the graphics are disappointing. Sure, the world is gorgeous from afar, but up close, you realise it’s not quite as shiny as you had initially thought.
Is There Hope?
The harsh truth? Eternal Strands feels more like Eternal Frustrations at this point. With its January 28 release date looming, I’m worried it’ll launch as a janky, clunky mess that ends up as the next Immortals Fenyx Rising – a game that had a lot of potentials but that nobody remembers just a few years later.
And yet, the foundation is there. Yellow Brick Games has built a world that’s begging to be explored. But unless they take the time to iron out these glaring gameplay issues, it’ll all be for nought.
BOTTOM LINE:
As someone who believes gaming should be a celebration, I genuinely hated writing this. But here’s the thing: games are meant to be fun. And right now, Eternal Strands is the opposite of fun. It’s frustrating, clunky, and, at times, downright annoying.