Splodey Boi Eternal Strands Review

Eternal Strands is a gorgeous fantasy RPG with fun combat and adventuring. It draws inspiration from games like Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus and maybe even a little Monster Hunter to create a wonderful world of monsters and magic to explore. Firstly, I have to talk about the visuals. This is an absolutely stunning game to look at, especially during the daytime missions. Honestly, the prettiest version of this type of art style I have ever seen. Vibrant colours and beautiful vistas make up most of the biomes. The game also ran quite smooth and is extremely well polished. Now the gameplay took a while to click for me - a few hours actually - but once it did I was having a lot of fun. The exploration, mob fighting and resource collection are very much where the Zelda inspiration comes in, but arguably the main draw of this game is the Shadow of the Colossus part... the giant monster slaying. These duels are very well done and the sense of scale when you climb these giants is absolutely on point. It was exhilarating to slay these monsters the first few times, but you have to go back and fight them a few times over to get more upgrade materials, which while still fun, loses that initial rush. And that leads me to my only real criticism of the game - it was a bit padded with repetition and was a bit too long. It will take anywhere from 25 to 30 hours to beat, depending on how much you want to explore and upgrade. The story was fine, nothing special, but all the dialogue (of which there was a lot) was well voice-acted and the characters were all likeable. I never felt like I was bored with their conversations, unlike other games where they don't add voices for some lines, and you have to sit and read. Combat-wise the game is quite simple, with a few fun weapons to use, although I wish there was more variety. Decent amount of spells though, which were fun to use and experiment with. Overall this is a really fun game and an amazing first project from the studio. Well done! I would welcome a sequel!