The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Review

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Playing The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales left me with a sense of incompleteness. While I had fun with Square Enix’s new action RPG, I felt like it could have been so much more.

This game has a lot of potential, but it doesn’t quite live up to it. The main issue is that the gameplay becomes very repetitive, forcing you to revisit the same areas repeatedly. Although the story and action improve later on, there’s too much unnecessary content to get through first.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is Square Enix’s first action-RPG using their unique HD-2D visual style – the same technology behind games like Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, and the remakes of Dragon Quest. This art style surprisingly fits the fast-paced action gameplay, and it’s arguably the game’s biggest strength.

The game’s HD-2D style creates a truly immersive world, focusing on vibrant environments and detailed landscapes more than previous games in this genre which typically featured medieval settings. This results in consistently beautiful visuals that really stand out, perfectly complemented by an incredible orchestral soundtrack – it’s both grand and playful! I especially love the carefully crafted character designs; even smaller characters feel full of life and personality thanks to the impressive animation.

Elliot is set in the fantastical world of Philabieldia, where humans live securely within the walled Kingdom of Huther, protected from dangerous beastmen. When strange ruins are found near the kingdom’s walls, the king asks adventurer Elliot to investigate. This leads to a time-bending discovery! During his journey, Elliot is joined by Faie, a fairy companion who uses her special abilities to help him explore, fight enemies, and solve puzzles.

Although people might compare Elliot to The Legend of Zelda, it actually feels more similar to classic Mana or Final Fantasy Adventure games in both its look and how it plays. In Elliot, you’ll explore a world, follow a central storyline, complete dungeons and defeat bosses, take on optional quests, and discover hidden areas – everything you’d expect from a great adventure game. The game keeps things interesting by letting you use a variety of weapons and skills in different ways to handle combat, exploration, and puzzles.

Elliot fights with four different weapons up close: a sword, spear, hammer, and sickle. Each weapon has unique uses in battle and often helps solve puzzles – for example, the hammer can charge up to break things or create temporary platforms. He also carries bombs to destroy cracked walls and rocks, a boomerang that hits multiple enemies, and arrows for attacking from afar. Although Elliot can’t dodge, he has a shield which is crucial for survival, especially after learning to perfectly time blocks to stun opponents.

Plus, Faie has unique powers that add lots of new gameplay possibilities. She can create a perfect copy of Elliot, give him a speed boost, launch fire attacks, teleport, and more! You control Faie separately with the right stick, which opens up interesting puzzles – like guiding her to distant platforms for teleports or through mazes to activate switches.

The game’s customization options really open up with the Magicite system. These are like special abilities you attach to weapons, changing how they work in significant ways. For instance, one Magicite could make your boomerang larger but slower, while another might boost your sword’s power when your shield is full. You can even find Magicites that alter things like making bombs bounce after being thrown.

As you explore the world, you’ll collect pieces of Magicite which can be combined to create new ones. You can also discover complete Magicite in chests. While adventuring, you’ll earn Tul, the local currency, used for things like buying accessories, healing potions, and upgrading your Magicite storage.

Elliot’s battles begin simply, feeling a bit limited at first. But as you play further and unlock new abilities, the fighting becomes much more fluid and engaging. By the final part of the game, I was really enjoying experimenting with different character builds and found the combat to be quite satisfying.

Although the game initially seems promising, its core mechanic – time travel – ultimately holds it back. The story unfolds across four different eras of the Kingdom of Huther, but the game frustratingly reuses the same map for each time period. This repetition significantly detracts from the experience.

As a huge fan, I’ve noticed something interesting about the game’s worlds – they’re all basically the same map! Sure, there are little changes here and there with each new age, but honestly, everything is in the exact same spot. The dungeons, hidden tunnels, even most of the enemies… it’s all familiar. I think the idea was to show how time affects a kingdom, but after a while, running through the same areas over and over gets pretty repetitive. It kind of loses its impact when you’re just retreading old ground.

The way dungeons change over time can be frustrating. Sometimes you’ll remember where a dungeon is located, enter it in a new era, and find only one accessible room with very little reward – which feels like a waste of effort. Also, the game tends to repeat enemy designs, including bosses. I was disappointed to fight different versions of the same boss early on, especially since I really liked the combat system and would have preferred facing unique opponents.

I also thought the dungeons weren’t very interesting – the puzzles felt too basic and often only required using a single one of Elliot’s skills instead of all of them. This problem was made worse by having to revisit the same areas multiple times throughout the game.

This reminds me of what I said at the beginning: the game feels like it could have been so much more. Elliot is often frustrating because you can see its potential, and you wish it had been bolder. The time-travel mechanic is a good concept – Chrono Trigger does it really well – but here it doesn’t feel fully developed or used to its full advantage. The story also takes a long time to get going, focusing on unimportant details before finally becoming exciting near the end, though it does offer multiple endings.

I actually like the fighting in this game, but it throws almost all the weapons and abilities at you right away. That means later on, you’re mostly just leveling up the magic system instead of finding cool new gear – which is a little disappointing.

While not a bad game, Elliot leaves you with a lingering sense of something missing. It has some great qualities – a charming art style and music, fun combat, and a wild ending – but they don’t quite come together seamlessly. It’s hard not to compare it to the consistently excellent HD-2D games Square Enix has released recently, which might contribute to this feeling.

I enjoyed The Adventures of Elliot! It’s a perfectly good action RPG and kept me entertained. Honestly, though, it feels like it has a lot of potential, and I think a sequel or another game built on this style could really shine. It’s a strong start, but this one doesn’t quite reach its full potential, in my opinion.

7

We tested The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales on the Nintendo Switch 2. It’s also playable on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and computers.

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2026-06-17 15:36