Video games, as with all art forms, are dependent somewhat on taking what came before and reimagining it in new forms. Developers look at one another’s work, play through it, and use their takeaways to influence their own creations. While this can sometimes create a sense of repetition between releases, it can also showcase truly impressive game design through a mix of loving tribute and engaging innovation. The latter is the region that The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales falls squarely into.
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Square Enix’s love letter to old-school adventure games is a genuine delight to play, especially for players with a soft spot for the older days of the Legend of Zelda franchise. There’s an impressive mix of natural worldbuilding, impressive art design, and tight gameplay that encourages exploration – both with actually checking out the overworld for secrets and playing with the wide array of weapons and magic made available to the player. While the story may not be as impressive as the rest of the product, Adventures of Elliot is a genuine accomplishment by Square Enix that makes for one of the year’s most enjoyable adventures yet.
Review Score: 4.5/5
| Pros: | Cons: |
| Terrific art design brings fun depth to the isometric 2.5D game design. | A trope-heavy story isn’t anything special. Basic combat can become repetitive over time. |
| Strong combat mechanics and solid weapon variety provide players with plenty of options. | Basic combat can become repeitive over time. |
| Strong worldbuilding sets up a natural impulse for exploration that makes the game hard to put down. |
A New Hero For A New Age
The Adventures of Elliot is a love letter to an older era of action-adventure titles, with a modern sensibility to game design that only improves upon the formula. An adventurer who finds themselves tasked with exploring a massive fantasy world alongside their fairy companion, fans of the Zelda franchise in particular will notice plenty of elements in Elliot’s adventure that feel inspired by that series. There’s the top-down action of A Link to the Past-era games, with an exploration of multiple time periods that feels inspired by Ocarina of Time. Minor ruins across the map provide brief challenges for quick rewards, recalling Breath of the Wild‘s Shrines, all while the massive world and unique enemy types reveal themselves in full. None of that is a complaint, either.
The synthesis of those elements around Elliot’s more unique aspects comes together to deliver a game that feels inspired by older titles rather than derivative of them. Adventures of Elliot’s weapon selection, use of isometric visuals, and especially the unique capabilities of Elliot’s fairy companion Faie offer a lot of distinct flavor to the game. The combat is smooth and fast-paced, with enough depth to keep even the basic enemy encounters engaging – though the secret ingredient to that may be the counter that rises with each successful attack, increasing the value of supply and money drops until the combo counter is broken by taking damage. Little touches like that give the player extra reason to be engaged with each battle, while the massive world and litany of secrets hidden across the space give players plenty of reason to just go adventuring. This is only compounded by Elliot’s ability to hop between time periods, opening up entire other paths to explore. On a gameplay level, Adventures of Elliot feels like an ambitious but loving attempt to reinvent what a top-down 2.5D adventure game can contain, a largely successful experiment that delivers a genuine sense of wonder and excitement as you make your way further through the world of Philabieldia.
Adventures Of Elliot Is A Tale As Old As Time
While the gameplay of Adventures of Elliot feels like a refinement of what came before it in the genre, the story is less groundbreaking. That’s not to say that the story or the characters are bad – there is a certain amount of charm to be found in the main cast, especially Faie once she’s become Elliot’s primary companion. However, the actual personality of Elliot, a seemingly near-perfect gentleman who is recruited for an early exploration and finds himself on a journey through time, is painfully familiar to fantasy fans. A couple of clever swerves later in the adventure don’t keep many of the characters from feeling like stock cut-outs rather than compelling characters in their own right.
The stellar art and sound design help mitigate that problem, whether that be the delightful pixel art or the more detailed dialogue portraits that pop up in the cut-scenes. However, this is where the influences on Adventures of Elliot become harder to filter into something that felt fresh. Again, it’s not bad – younger players with less experience in that genre might get some good surprises, while older players with a love for that style of game may get a bit of a nostalgic thrill from that narrative approach. There’s nothing aggressively bad; it just doesn’t quite reach the same level of uniqueness that the rest of the game takes on the formula. Elliot himself is a fine player character, even if he lacks the complexity to really stand out. The story is fine, if sometimes hard not just to skip through.
An Adventure Well Worth Embarking Upon
As the gaming landscape has changed, so too has the action-adventure genre evolved. Even as the ambition of games like Tears of the Kingdom or Elden Ring has shown off the sheer scale and scope that gaming can embrace, there is still room for a copier adventure that can play with nostalgia. Indie games like Under the Island and rogue-likes like Hades II have made that very clear with their own take on this top-down formula, often to strong effect. Adventures of Elliot is what happens when you get a team as experienced as Square Enix takes a crack at the concept, leading to a level of craft and refinement that you rarely find even in the top-tier game studio space. The combat, puzzles, and natural sense of adventure baked into this game are marvelous, delivering one of the most purely enjoyable games I’ve played all year.
Even as characters try to gently push you in the right direction, it’s hard not to want to explore the entirety of Philabieldia. While item restrictions and timeline hopping keep you from going exploring fully, the natural progression of the adventure lends itself to a fun sense of discovery. Once that door is open to further exploration, especially, it becomes hard not to go venturing into the wild to find what challenges and rewards await you. Whenever it can get out of its own way and just let the player roam, Adventures of Elliot is an absolute delight that is easy to recommend to veteran gamers and newbie players alike. While it may have a lot of qualities that gamers have seen a hundred times before, it does it all with enough unique artistic touches and strong design choices to stand out and be worth your time.
A PS5 copy of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales was provided to ComicBoom for the purposes of this review.
