Eternal Strands

I can't believe more people aren't talking about Eternal Strands!! This game has so much heart. Exploring the world, combining magic with physics, climbing giant creatures, and getting to know the cast was an absolute joy. You can tell the devs poured love into it. One of my favorite surprises in recent years, and I hope it finds the audience it deserves.

This game has excellent mechanics and a pretty satisfying gameplay loop... when it lets you actually do it. This game also has some of the worst pacing I've had the displeasure of experiencing. With gameplay this good, I cannot believe they insist on wasting your time with tons of dialogue that isn't even good. No offense to the writers, but you need to work on your craft, because I couldn't care about any of these people, and they were just annoying and blockers to what I was here for, which is the stellar and very dynamic combat with large enemies. If the devs just went all in on the boss fights and made it more like MH than it already is, I think this would be such an easy recommendation from me. Let me put it this way; If you front load your gameplay, I understand what your game will expect from me and what I can expect from your game. If you make it so that you can skip through boring parts easily to get back to the gameplay, that will make it much easier to get back to that gameplay. If you front load your story, then I don't even know if I'm going to like the game enough to care about your story. If you make it so that you can't easily skip through boring parts to get to the gameplay, that will make it harder to get back to that good gameplay. With me so far? Now let's add this onto that: People who are patient enough to sit through a story will likely be patient enough to sit through gameplay focused sections, but people who are impatient and just want gameplay will quit your game if you keep stopping them from playing it... You're dropping your players who are easy to keep by focusing too much on ones that would be sticking around anyways because the story interests them... Also, less is more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I honestly can't see them fixing these issues without pretty much fundamentally changing the game and it's pacing/structure, so... while the fights are (for the most part) very interesting and quite fun, an awesome mix of Shadows of the Colossus, Monster Hunter, and Dark Souls, it's really held back by an absolutely terrible pacing, which is a shame because I want to like this game so bad.

Eternal strands is fantastic game and a strong first entry for what I hope gets a full blown expansion pack or a sequel. Simple checklist Art style - Art is a oil painting styled high fantasy aesthetic with narrative elements informing many fabric themed design elements. Subjectively, 10/10 Combat - very solid, there are three weapon types, sword and shield, bow, and heavy two hander, that you can carry at all times, and each has variants that allow for unique combos along side the interesting magic system. Enemies are slightly simple in their attack variety but firmly distinct from one another, with the exception of the bosses/great foes. The bosses all have unique mechanics and each has a special requirement in which you must remove and break elements of each creature to remove a unique essence that is used to add and upgrade your spells to your arsenal. Movement - Noteworthy separation, this game features full blown "Climb on anything" movement, which applies neatly to the large "Great Foes" bosses, shadow of the colossus style. This is fantastic, could only be improved by somehow incorporating a grappling hook in the sequel that lets you swing from things. Story - As a starter entry into the setting, it tells you just enough to understand the circumstances of the world, without bogging things down too much in the early moments of the game, throughout the game you are drip fed much of the world building as you and the other characters are trying to piece together events surrounding a disaster that they have found themselves standing in the ruins of, accompanied with a splash of brewing catastrophe, but not a full blown "The world is ending" plot, which might have been overbearing for a first entry. If nothing else its mildly post apocalyptic in that sense. Without spoilers - the story concludes in a way that is satisfying but doesn't fully close the door on the mysteries uncovered, and hints that things could become more interesting in the future. Characters / writing quality - Characters are well written, this game does feature a small depth of dialogue, not quite a full blown mass effect/dragon age, but characters have depth and backstories and unique motivations, and the voice acting carries it well. My only minor complaint is that the UI could be tightened up so that these interactions felt smoother to get in and out of, I neglected a few dialogue trees because I felt like I was trapped under a few layers of dialogue menus before I actually started a conversation. Crafting system - the game features a robust crafting system in which you are looting unique materials from all elements in the world, minerals, trees, leathers and so on. All of these parts can be used in a modular fashion when crafting any gear or weapon to affect its damage, armor, weight and elemental resistance stats. Furthermore, any component can be swapped out for any other even after the item is created through "Reforging" with a full refunding of the materials used, so there is zero loss of crafting items in the system. Overall - Eternal strands is a pretty fantastic and unique game with a pretty strong foundation that I found satisfying to engage with and learn its systems and I cannot wait for a future title update. Mmmm - Very good would recommend to a friend... out of ten.

This game is fantastic and respects my time in so many refreshing ways! - The plot, character growth, and immersion were fantastic. The gameplay and magical interactions were solid. I loved the fact that many different kinds of magic could be used to overcome different situations and it was all allowed and supported. - I took about 60h to complete every quest and the main storyline and the time and attention that was given to reduce grind and let me complete the things I wanted to do was so nice. Specifically calling out two systems as excellent: the ability to trade all the useless junk I'd built up for credits and buy endgame components, and the ability to get in-game guidance on where those last POIs are after completing the story. These two systems prevented hours and hours of repetitive grinding and supported my completionist tendencies without wasting my time. Now that I'm thinking about it, many of the other systems in this game were excellent demonstrations that you can create a great game while supporting exploration, customization, and tweaking gear/playstyles without punishing the player for it.

Playing on normal, I think I'm around 80% done. At first, I was really having fun with the gameplay, which was a mix of BOTW and Shadow of the Colossus. Art design looked nice, and the game performed well enough. But for some reason, I didn't care at all for the story or the characters. And the "colossus" fights have become tedious and frustrating, I don't want to do them anymore. Whenever I get this far into a game, I almost always soldier on to the end to get some closure. But for this one, I have zero motivation to continue. If I do decide to, most likely I'll dial it down to story mode. I got this game on sale for around $7, and I think the game has given me more than that in terms of entertainment. But I'm still saying "don't recommend" because this is a mediocre game, and I wouldn't want to recommend mediocrity to anyone.

UE5 in this game brought my MSI Claw 7Ai to heel (even with XeSS), despite other UE5 games like Kiborg running on it with no issues. So I gave this game a try on my 4070 laptop, and the game runs great—even without DLSS. The art-style and graphics remind me a bit of Kena B.o.S. (Unreal Engine 4), and Immortals Fenyx Rising (to which some of the devs are from Ubisoft). The movement and flow of combat seem similar to those games. And there's some Zelda inspiration thrown in as well, which isn't a bad thing... Overall, the game has been enjoyable and the performance rock solid.

This is one of those few games that hits a sweet spot. - It's a world that punishes mistakes and tactical blunders. But everything has tutorials, if you want to take a refresher on why you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and how to do better. - There is complexity and interaction between abilities and gear. But it's all legible and visible. You can see how everything interacts, and make assumptions about results that are either right or testably wrong. - The game has a storyline, but also has freedom. Always the lure to find and unlock more, but it isn't super grindy. You never feel like you have to do things you don't like just to get 112 more MacGuffin scales. You still can, and you an still benefit from it, but you don't have to. - Combat is very well-made to encourage and reward a mixture of styles. There are only a few weapon types, with a good mix of advantages to each - every style is GOING to be useful to you at certain times. - Temperature mechanics often make dynamic play-styles well rewarded; many enemies have hot and cold attacks that serve as area denial, and you can either counter these with your own spells or keep mobile. Either way, it demands response, you can't just camp and snipe. - There are no spell combos, but spells naturally interact in ways that create de-facto combos, like some physics spells concentrating fire or ice effects. This is naturally discoverable, and useful in and out of combat - mastering how to mix up spellcasting and weapon use is very rewarding.

Another victim of Unreal Engine 5. Why should I have to play a blurry mess if I want a halfway stable framerate. And all for graphics that look like they're from 2018.

The game opens up very promising. Promising in a way that makes you curious as to what is coming next. Like if it starts pretty decent, it's going to get way better. That isn't really the case. The game establishes a lot of what to expect right away and doesn't improve on it in any big ways. Combat Is really simple and straightforward and enemies also let you know there isn't going to be anything too interesting about combat either. Enemies have a good amount of health and are plentiful so you're going to get really tired of fighting them whenever you have to. You have a couple weapons but with how simple enemies are, you'll just do whatever your highest damage attack and spam it. Magic seems very cool initially, then immediately you realize it is all gimmicky and meant for very specific requirements with bosses or even more seldom, traversal in the world. The bosses are the best part about the game next to just the density of the world you're looking at. But even with that, the bosses are also pretty simple and aren't all that interesting to overcome. The game struggles with tackling like a lot of different pieces and not giving them enough depth of interesting elements to them. I would love to see a sequel that just improves on everything this game tried to do. Because each part of it is almost really cool but not cool enough. I'm about half way through the game and I don't think I can possibly play it anymore.

Çok güzel gözüküyordu ama hiç mi hiç sarmadı ne hikaye işleyişi ne savaş mekaniği. 1 saat yetti bana siliyorum.