There is something wonderfully old fashioned about The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. Not old fashioned in the sense that it feels dated, but in the way it captures that almost impossible to describe feeling of sitting down with an adventure game as a kid and knowing there is an entire world waiting beyond the next screen. It is colourful, earnest, packed with secrets and constantly rewarding your curiosity. In many ways it feels like Square Enix reaching back into its own history and asking what a classic 16-bit action RPG might look like if it were being made for the first time today.
The obvious comparison is The Legend of Zelda, particularly the classic top-down games like A Link to the Past and The Minish Cap. Elliot has that same wonderful rhythm of exploration where almost everything you discover makes you wonder what might be hiding just beyond it. Caves lead to treasure, strange obstacles become accessible once you gain new abilities and dungeons steadily build puzzles around the tools you have collected. But there is also plenty of Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure in its DNA. The real-time combat, RPG systems and constant swapping between weapons make it feel like Square Enix’s own interpretation of that classic Zelda formula rather than simply an imitation of it.
The combat ended up being one of my favourite parts of the game. Elliot gradually builds an arsenal that includes swords, bows, bombs, boomerangs, spears, hammers and more, and nearly everything has a purpose beyond simply dealing damage. There is a satisfying physicality to hitting enemies, while blocking and parrying give fights just enough depth that I never felt like I was mindlessly swinging away. The bosses are especially good, frequently turning everything you have learned into these wonderfully designed little tests of timing, positioning and figuring out exactly what the game wants from you. It is simple enough to immediately understand but has far more going on beneath the surface than I initially expected.
Faie is also a huge part of what gives the adventure its personality. She is not simply the obligatory fairy floating beside the hero. Her abilities become genuinely important to exploration, puzzles and combat, and learning new ways to use her alongside Elliot creates some of the game’s most satisfying moments. There is something very Zelda-like about entering an area, spotting something you cannot quite reach and mentally filing it away for later. The difference here is that your expanding toolset is split between Elliot and Faie, which gives the game its own little twist on that familiar formula.
Then there is the time travel, which is where The Adventures of Elliot begins to become something more ambitious. Travelling across different eras in time gives the world a sense of history that I really loved. You are not simply exploring different versions of a map, you are gradually piecing together how places, people and events connect across enormous stretches of time. There is a little bit of Chrono Trigger in the joy of seeing how the world changes between eras, although Elliot is very much doing its own thing with the concept. What begins as a fairly traditional fantasy adventure gradually reveals a much bigger story than its opening hours suggest.
It also might be the best showcase yet for Square Enix’s HD-2D style. There were countless moments where I stopped simply to look at the environment. The tiny pixel characters against these richly detailed landscapes, the lighting pouring through forests and ruins, the reflections on water and the miniature diorama-like towns all look gorgeous. HD-2D has become familiar enough now that it no longer has the novelty it did when Octopath Traveler first arrived, but Elliot reminded me why I fell in love with the style in the first place. More importantly, seeing it applied to a fast-moving action RPG rather than another turn-based game makes it feel fresh again.
What I perhaps love most is how sincere the whole thing feels. Elliot himself is almost refreshingly straightforward as a protagonist. He is an adventurer because he loves adventure. He helps people because it is the right thing to do. There is no desperate attempt to make him dark or complicated, and the game is completely comfortable embracing the simple pleasure of being a hero setting out into an unknown world. Combined with Faie and the colourful cast surrounding him, there is a warmth to the adventure that made Philabieldia somewhere I genuinely enjoyed spending time in.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales feels like discovering a forgotten SNES classic that somehow has the production values of a modern Square Enix game. It takes the exploration and puzzle solving of classic Zelda, mixes it with the action RPG heart of Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure, throws in a dash of Chrono Trigger through its journey across time and wraps the whole thing in some of the most beautiful HD-2D visuals Square Enix has produced. It may wear its inspirations proudly, but by the end Elliot’s adventure had more than enough personality of its own. This is exactly the kind of game I wish Square Enix made more often. Colourful, imaginative, mechanically satisfying and completely unashamed of being an adventure in the purest sense of the word.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.
