The last time I saw Elliot was at the tail end of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales demo. At that time, I was already hooked by the cliffhanger of our main protagonist taking a giant blade to the chest and falling to his death. Obviously, the demo didn’t cover the entire game; actually, it only featured the first two hours or so, though you do get the chance to explore and pad that out. Picking up the main game, Elliot was sinking to his death while a butterfly was offering him a way out, telling Elliot that he could indeed be revived.
What you can never gauge from a demo is how representative it will be of the full product. In the case of The Adventures of Elliot, it is very accurate and offers a pretty detailed idea. Despite the length, though, it is shortly after this that the game takes an even stronger turn into a game that genuinely celebrates the art of Adventure in some meaningful ways. Elliot then resumed his journey through time, now seeking a way to even injure Kaifried, who literally killed him moments before. Though I guess that relative in a time travel game.
Elliot doesn’t level up, but there are many meaningful ways the player constantly makes progress. The player has the option of equipping two weapons at a time and can swap between them quickly through a reticle, so it’s not a whole process to adjust this. Attacks typically play out either with a standard or charged attack, lacking combos on individual weapons but allowing you free range for how you mix and match. Throw a boomerang to hit an enemy, then slash, then land another hit as the boomerang returns, and early on, you will learn. Another fun one is a charged sword hit to a known enemy, back a moment, then use the extended range of the spear to keep hitting.
There is a large variety of weapons at his disposal, with multiple doubling as the tools needed to eventually get past blocked points that further open up the beautifully crafted map. You will also find numerous upgraded versions of weapons to increase the overall damage output, so you are always working towards something, as long as you keep exploring everything around. My biggest gripe with this, though, is that tools like the bomb or bow have ammo and feel less viable in a weapon slot. I felt like there should have been an additional item slot for these to make them flow better. More so when you realize how often you need to drop a bomb for traversal rather than combat, which is never a primary for me, constantly forcing me to switch, which was an annoyance rather than an inconvenience.
This bled into combat as I would frequently try to trigger my spear, only to drop a bomb. Bombs in combat take a while to explode and will hit you if you are too close, so dropping one accidentally can be a detriment. Not that combat is very frantic, feeling reminiscent of the old Ys or Legend of Mana games. Enemies wander the map, and you, as Elliot, wander straight up to them to wreck their day. Most can get stunned as you hit, allowing you to swipe and kill fairly easily. The twists on this are a few harder enemies that will get an attack regardless or faster enemies that come at you. There is an item drop bonus for continuous kills without taking damage, creating a reward system for taking combat seriously.
Defensively, the player can’t dodge attacks, but they do have a shield that can fully block. This creates a system where you can either play tight against the enemy in hopes of negating the attack or play further back and get reactionary if you so choose. I did both through my time, and there are times when one approach is preferable to the other. One example is a boss that summons icicles, which can easily break your guard gauge and force you to eat damage at the tail end of it. Playing further back is preferable when learning an enemy’s moves as well, giving you the better option in how to engage. It offers up a dynamic amount of depth to such simple combat. This will even be upgraded further on, adding even more layers.
The Adventures of Elliot is fully open world, but the world itself is deceptively small. In the map, you can see that there are a few land masses, but if you run straight from where you are to where you want to go, it might be just one or two roads. Don’t let this fool you, though. For starters, the strength of this comes from there being four eras you get to explore this country through. There is some overlap between these areas, as it is the same country, just a few hundred years apart, but many of the roads show some significant differences.
What’s even more impressive is just how much is packed into these tiny maps. The most prominent thing that is hidden around is shard fragments, acting similarly to heart containers from The Legend of Zelda. Some are hidden in temple-like structures that contain a puzzle inside, but there are a few different types of these buildings, each with different things to collect. On top of this, there are a lot of mandatory and optional dungeons that offer plenty of first-time exploration, then return later on to find every secret hidden in them. Some treasure chests have pointless unlocks, mainly Tul, which you are probably earning in droves just by fighting, but most have genuinely great rewards in them that make all the trouble worth it.
The side quests also might be one of the best uses of them that Square Enix has done to date. Each is tied to a specific character across the ages, all adding depth to the events, even if many require heading to a location and farming material. They also have rewards like increased equipment pouches that make them worth it, just like everything else. They might be bolstered by the fact that they, like the rest of the game, have a great voice cast narrating everything. Elliot and the crew have handcrafted art, but a cast that genuinely makes you see past a few static images and paint a picture in your head as to how this scene is playing out. This is a brand new IP, and I’m already imagining the modern remake I have waited 20 years for.
This is then bolstered by a soundtrack that invokes the golden era of RPGs. It is a modern orchestral piece, but it’s easy to imagine what a 16-bit rendition might sound like. It’s the kind of sound that invokes adventure and propels you forward. Tomohiro Nakamachi and Yuto Moritani are names that should pop up way more in the Square Enix soundscape because they absolutely nailed it with originality that evokes nostalgia at every turn.
Each era packs a multitude of challenges into each area, with very little translating between them. This gives each unique task to take on, with almost none of them actually being requested of the player. Plus, since the game slowly rewards you with the tools to unlock certain paths and makes jumping between each ear as easy as going into the map and selecting a point, traversing them is straightforward. There are some points where trying to track something on the map can be slightly confusing, as you try to find the exact right path to take to lead you there, but getting never lost actually bothered me. It is actually outstanding just how deep and dense the collectathon is, and you will not clear the entire map by following the story, so take the road less traveled often.
Battling bosses, weirdly enough, has a lot in common with Mina the Hollower, which probably explains why I loved them so much. Honestly, both games share a lot of similar elements, which might be why they both are so high on my list of games in general. Big bads throw attacks at you that you need to stop and see so you know just how to react. You follow, and black a slash, then go in for a few of your own, rinse, lather, and repeat. Like any good Square Enix title, there are also a bunch of hidden ones in the map that you can search out and find and might even need to if you want to complete everything.
There is a case to argue that the game is too easy, which was one of the biggest drawbacks. Right where the demo ends, you meet a fairy that replaces the princess you had through the first portion. On the one hand, this gives the player the magic abilities that, again, add a massive amount of depth to exploration. It also helps you contextualize a few elements that you have come across but had no way to interact with until now.
While this fairy never shuts up, as many people have complained, she quickly became my favorite character thanks to Brenna Larson’s performance as Faie, allowing her to have a childlike personality and bubbly disposition, which quickly won me over. That said, it gets annoying when she often points out I’m missing some clue to the task before me, but she never helps explain what. She does tell you there are more items to find in an area, though, which is great.
Now, where the complaint about difficulty comes in is that she also allows you to revive upon death at the cost of the currency Tul. But the point you unlock her, it is easy to be rolling in it, and I genuinely started to sacrifice myself for cheap hits knowing I could revive with the enemy at the same health and me at full. I started playing a lot less cautiously, knowing I could do this, and the biggest shock was how little a perfect block or avoiding hits mattered to just full frontal slashing and reviving. Keep in mind, this was on Normal, so harder difficulties might punish you more, but on a normal run, who cares, I guess, is the crux of the issue.
Verdict
I say this as somebody who loves Square Enix, sometimes way more than I should. The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a new gold standard in their catalogue. For starters, this is the HD-2D game that breaks from the mold. Not a remake, not a spiritual successor; this is something new and fresh that makes you do a double-take. It evokes everything I love about Square Enix, or more so, both Square and Enix when they were putting out banger after banger, unafraid to take risks. If you were ever a fan of their games, this is the one for you, and proof that there is some great talent for world-building still left to be tapped into.
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Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2, also available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC
Developer: Claytechworks, Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: June 18, 2026
Pros:
+Fantastic voice acting
+Great world design across multiple eras
+Packed with collectables and puzzles
+Everything meaningful to progression
+Enjoyable old school combat
Con:
-Can be easy
-Some weapons should be allowed to be set seperately
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The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales
