The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Review - History Repeats
As the HD-2D initiative continues to build momentum within the walls of Square-Enix, we see the developer stray from the traditional JRPG mould, to experiment in other realms. From tactics games like Triangle Strategy, to adaptations of mobile titles with the upcoming Final Fantasy Resonance, and now, the soon to release, ‘The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales’. For fans of Super Nintendo-era action-adventure titles such as The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, and Secret Of Mana/Evermore, you’re going to feel very much at home with the systems underpinning The Adventures Of Elliot, but if you’re looking for some modern complexities, and a heftier narrative, then you’ve come to the right place. The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a wonderful middle ground that is embracing the best of both worlds.
The player assumes the role of Elliot (surprise! You expected somebody else?), an adventurer, who finds himself dragged into an investigation that is being conducted by the kingdom of Huther, where they’re wishing to examine some recently uncovered ruins to learn about the stored magical knowledge at the site. Elliot’s credentials as an adventurer make him the perfect recruit to examine the location, but upon doing so, he quickly uncovers a door to different eras of time, and learns of a looming threat to humankind that he is soon tasked with the job of saving humanity from. At face value, it’s a pretty straight forward, and not overly complex plot, but the nuance is found in the cast of characters that you meet along the way. There are a number of fascinating characters across eras to work with, and some intriguing side-quests to check out as well. There are 30 to check out, and the quests themselves vary a bit in terms of their scope and quality, but largely, you’re engaging with a series of fascinating side-stories, some more entangled with the main plot than you might realise at first.
Where The Adventures Of Elliot shares more of its DNA with those SNES classics is in its gameplay. You’ll assume the role of Elliot in a traditional top down perspective, but you’ll have a wide range of weapons at your disposal to tackle the various threats you face. Elliot can wield the standard swords, spears, bow and arrow, and bombs, but you also have the benefit of more niche weapons like boomerangs, a hammer, and my personal favourite, the chain and sickle, which can be twirled around your head repeatedly, wrecking havoc on all that enter the radius of your swing. Weapons can be also imbued with a range of different equipable abilities via the games magicite system which can add damage output, increase critical hit rate, or even offer some wilder advantages such as the ability to shoot fireballs with every flail of the sickle. Shards are accumulated while in combat that can be spent to randomly draw new magicite for your weapons, which can either unlock new abilities or upgrade those already available. You can also spend your hard earned currency to upgrade the number of slots available for you to equip magicite on each weapon, making for an extremely robust system. Your fairy companion Faie can also be controlled with the right thumbstick and can equip a range of powers to help with movement and platforming, as well as offer some additional combat help.
If you’ve not heard by now, Elliot is an adventurer, and if you don’t take that away with you from this review, then the game will beat you over the head with it. You’ll rapidly tire of Elliot referencing himself as an adventurer, meanwhile, If you thought Ocarina Of Time’s Navi could be excessive at times, she has nothing on Elliot’s companion Faie, who has some of the most grating voice-acting I’ve heard in a game in quite some time. I get it, fairy’s stereotypically have higher pitched, squeaky voices, but the delivery here was just a bit too much, and the writing doesn’t help in this respect either. The voicework is otherwise excellent, with the more prominent cast members, and even those in bit-part roles doing an admirable job in selling the world, and the events playing out within it. The soundtrack is sublime, ebbing and flowing like the breeze, but swelling in epic ways as the situation requires, and then there are those HD-2D graphics, which pop extraordinarily well. By this point, I shouldn’t be as impressed as I am by games like The Adventures Of Elliot, what with my experience of many other Square-Enix HD-2D games, but the art design works hand-in-hand with the technology to blow you away.
The Adventures Of Elliot has depth in all the right places, but doesn’t overstay its welcome. You’ll need a few dozen hours to see the game out, making it a bit meatier than the games that are so easy to draw comparisons to, but there’s a lot of engaging content to check out, without putting too much on your plate that leads to a point of burnout. With engaging characters, a richly detailed and wonderfully realised world, combat that is easy to sink your teeth into, but with enough meat to it to leave you feeling like there are more ways to extend yourself, and a fantastic musical score, The Adventures Of Elliot is well worth discussing in the pantheon of the best games of 2026.
The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales was reviewed on PS5 with a code kindly provided by Bandai-Namco Australia on behalf of Square-Enix.
