The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review

The popularity of HD-2D games is at a fever pitch right now, and I’m not immune. Popularized by 2018’s Octopath Traveler, the style blends 16-bit sprite work with 3-D environments for a look that, when done right, can leave your jaw on the floor. When I found out Square Enix was doing another new game in such a striking visual style, I knew I’d have to get my hands on it. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales stands as a reminder that while visual design can improve the experience, it can’t make a game great on its own.

The Adventures of Elliot opens in the Kingdom of Huther. Beast tribes have taken over most of the known world. Their forces are kept at bay thanks to Princess Heuria and a protective spell she keeps over the kingdom. When nearby ruins are discovered, King Hichard brings in Elliot, a renowned adventurer, to leave the safety of Heuria’s spell, check things out, and report back. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, Elliot finds himself in a different time period. He befriends Faie, a fairy with magical powers, and she joins him. After the Princess suffers roadblocks that hamper her protective efforts, Elliot sets out on the biggest adventure of his life – a fight through history to save humanity hiding behind the walls.

The story of Adventures of Elliot feels serviceable without delivering on its setups – at least, not without extra work. There are storybeats that hint at some interesting payoffs you won’t get to see taking the critical path. By and large, the characters feel tropey and uninteresting. You’ll see humanity across time, from tribal life to a technologically advanced people to your standard medieval fantasy setting. Story beats do just enough to keep you MacGuffin chasing. There are a handful of notable characters you’ll experience along the way. Unfortunately, many of them lack staying power. There are threads worth pulling on, but you’ll have to go out of your way to see that happen.

The game’s voicework feels good. Elliot sounds the part of an adventuring hero. I don’t want to throw shade at Faie’s voice actor – she executed perfectly on the assignment – but Faie may be one of the most annoying sidekicks in video gaming. Give me Navi any day. The rest of the supporting cast play their parts well enough to drive the story.

Mechanically, The Adventures of Elliot plays like any other action RPG, though the most immediate comparison is probably A Link to the Past. The game takes a three-quarters view, puts you in a field with a sword, and allows you to cut grass that drops rup..er, tul. As you roam the world, you’ll find checkpoints. These will give you a place to save your game, checkpoint a quicksave, and act as a quick-travel point. The available paths you have often change between time periods, so you’ll have to unlock these locations for each time period.

Adventures of Elliot is rich with extra content to explore and uncover. There are dungeons spread all over the world, and each one typically houses some sort of boss battle with an item of significance as the reward. There are new weapons and skills to pick up as you explore. There are shrines all over the world, too. Many of these will give you the equivalent of a heart container piece. Finding four of these gets you a new health pip. The shrines can also offer new or upgraded abilities for Faie, which also help in boss fights and puzzles. While it takes a bit to unlock, you’ll eventually be able to interact with cats across the world, bringing them to a single person for added rewards. It gives you a reason to search the world over a few different times.

Combat is all real-time. You can perform a quick attack or hold the button for a charged attack. You start with a sword, but can find a handsome variety of weapons to use in your adventure. With a quick-access wheel, you can equip two different weapons at a time – one to the square button and one to the triangle button. This can set you up to be effective at both melee and long-range. Across your journey, you’ll be able to find higher-tier weapons that replace your current gear. The higher-tier weapons allow for stronger charge attacks, too. Many of the weapons, like the boomerang or bomb, will be used for puzzle-solving, too. 

Elliot is also equipped with a shield. At one point, you’ll be granted the ability to perform a perfect block. Enemies will flash red and attack. If you time it correctly, you can reflect projectiles or stun your foes to open them up for massive damage.

As you kill enemies, a counter goes up. There are a handful of milestones that will net you bonuses if you can reach them without taking a hit. At 5, 15, and 30 enemies killed, the drop rate for money and health increases. Taking a hit will shatter the streak, resetting it to 0. When you die (and depending on the difficulty you play on, you WILL die), Faie gives you the option of spending your hard-earned tul for a full-heal resurrection. Each time you die without reaching a checkpoint, the cost of a revive doubles, so be mindful of your health and money.

The game’s enemy design offers a lot of variety. From slow, simple slugs to quick, brutal beastmen, Adventures of Elliot’s enemies feel environmentally appropriate while giving you a range of novel encounters to deal with. Taking on average foes can get pretty boring in some games, but Elliot never felt that way to me. It was fun to see what challenges waited around the next bend.

In the same vein, I want to give Adventures of Elliot particular kudos for its boss design. You’ll encounter a wide range of bosses, each with its own particular attack patterns and weaknesses. They do an excellent job providing you a reason to test your different weapons and Faie abilities. Nailing their attack patterns, exploiting their weaknesses, and perfectly blocking their attacks feels fantastic. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed boss fights of this nature so much.

As you can probably guess, Adventures of Elliot features excellent visual design. It’s a major part of what caught the attention of the public. The game has beautiful sprites with striking visual effects. The environments feel like a callback to classically designed 3D PlayStation 1-era games. The game’s soundtrack takes a very Square Enix approach, offering big, sweeping orchestral scores that know how to amplify the emotions of a situation: fast pacing and heavy drums for exciting moments, flutes with wandering melodies for world exploration, and soft, upbeat violin-infused compositions for spending time in town. It’s a great audiovisual experience.

I do need to mention one particular item of concern I wasn’t expecting. Late in the game, particularly in some of the dungeons I encountered, I noticed some significant framerate stuttering. I played Adventures of Elliot on a base PlayStation 5, but I would have assumed the console to have more than ample power for a simplistic 3D game with 2D sprites. Games with this art style have been around since the late ‘90s. If the PlayStation 5— a console the world is planning to experience Grand Theft Auto VI on— drops frames, I have to assume two things are true: first, the game is, surprisingly, in need of optimization and second, the Switch 2 will likely experience the same issues or worse (though I’ll let David’s pending impressions of the Switch 2 version speak to his experience with that).

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a fun action-adventure RPG with plenty to explore. It’s visually striking and features a lovely orchestral soundtrack. Dungeon and boss design are excellent, satisfying your brain whether puzzle-solving or deciphering attack patterns. Unfortunately, without committing to side work, the story feels somewhat predictable and uninspired. The nature of time-travel in a game like this practically begs for recycled content with slightly altered context. That said, my time with Elliot was fun. Just be aware that, should you embark on this adventure with him, doing anything less than everything may leave you disappointed with the ending (of which there are multiple).