Even in its early alpha state, my extensive hands-on time with Eternal Strands gave me a lot to be excited about. Whether it’s the Monster Hunter-esque boss fights against giant creatures, the interesting and flexible physics-manipulating magical powers, or the obvious dedication to telling a wholesome story filled with lovable characters, this upcoming indie repeatedly surprised me by being very different from its action-adventure peers. By combining a hodgepodge of some of my favorite elements from different genres into one action-packed package, developer Yellow Brick Games hopes to pull off something wholly unique with its inaugural title. After numerous hours climbing atop fiery dragons and freezing pesky knights in a block of ice, I think Eternal Strands stands a good chance of delivering something really special, and I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on it.
Eternal Strands: An Exclusive First Look at an Shadow of the Colossus-Like Epic Boss Battle First
04.04.2024 - 16:07 / ign.com
In Eternal Strands, a major part of your adventure will be doing battle with the nine massive bosses that wander freely throughout parts of the world. In my time exploring the magical land of The Enclave, I encountered a handful of these formidable monstrosities, which ranged from a robotic bipedal summoner who used his magical staff to cover the world in fire to a flying dragon who persistently hunted me from the skies above. Continuing our month-long coverage of Eternal Strands as part of IGN First, today we’ll be taking a look at one such oversized baddie: The Ark of the Forge, a hammer-wielding automaton with deep love of smelting puny Weavers into piles of ash.
The Ark of the Forge is one of the bosses you’ll encounter in the second half of your adventure, as you explore the underground forge of the ruined city-state of The Enclave. Since bringing down these behemoths is how you obtain your game-changing magical powers in Eternal Strands, you’ll want to throw yourself at this mechanical blacksmith at your earliest convenience, as I did the moment I saw him.
After getting immolated on my first attempt, Jo and Fred of Yellow Brick Games gave me some advice on fighting this fiery tyrant.
“So one of his trademark visual things you will notice, the first is, of course, the giant, flaming hammer. So spoiler alert: he does use this giant hammer to create fire in the environment. He can hit the ground with it. It makes a lot of flames everywhere, and makes the environment super hot. So then you need to avoid not only the giant hammer, which is enough trouble on its own, but also what that creates in the environment. Which, when you fight with him, after two to three minutes, you can get into a situation where you look at the battlefield and you don't know where to go because there's so much fire everywhere. It's not a one-and-done. The fire stays in the environment and it does affect the battlefield a lot,” game designer Jonathan Lachance told me.
Game director and co-founder Frederic St-Laurent added, “He also has an anger management problem because…If you start doing a lot of damage to him, he's going to get angry, like flame up his entire body and run directly at you to smash your face.”
That troublesome ability to light his entire body on fire certainly made fighting the big brute a challenge, since in order to beat him, you’ll probably want to climb atop his massive body to deal melee damage to areas of his body not protected by armor. That became quite difficult when I was not only managing the usual stamina meter for climbing, but also my health meter as I was dealt damage-over-time from the oppressive flames.
In order to counter his scorching offensive, I’d need to make use of some of the ice-based
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