In a relatively short time, Team Asano at Square Enix has made a name for itself. Between the Bravely and Octopath series, it has become known for taking a fresh look at retro RPGs by experimenting with new ideas and visual styles, creating games that feel both familiar and new. The developer takes a similar approach when it comes to The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, an action-adventure RPG that emulates the feel of a top-down Legend of Zelda or Mana game but uses the studio's signature HD-2D visual style. But while the action and adventuring are well-crafted, a dull story and verbose characters have the unfortunate tendency of deadening the momentum.
The Adventures of Elliot takes place in the fictional kingdom of Philabieldia (try the cheesesteaks!), ruled by a kindly king and under the magical protection of his daughter. The area surrounding the castle grounds is beset by deadly beastmen and the princess' presence carries a passive spell of safety that keeps them at bay. Elliot is an Adventurer, an actual job title that appears to be some mixture of mercenary and wandering odd-job doer, and only Adventurers are known to travel outside the castle walls and brave the beasts. After a sinister duke discovers a method to go back in time to claim a powerful relic, Elliot follows him and thus begins hopping between different eras, going further and further back in his kingdom's history.
In terms of sheer mechanics, The Adventures of Elliot is a modest but welcome step forward for the genre. This HD-2D visual style works so well for a top-down Zelda-style adventure game that you would never know it had been created for turn-based RPGs. The combat is sharp and responsive, and the diorama-like presentation gives you a very clear idea of where the enemy threats are coming from. Elliot gets a wide variety of weapons, ranging from his basic sword to a heavy hammer, boomerang, and consumables like arrows and bombs, along with some less conventional weaponry like a spear or chain scythe. Each weapon has its own advantages and disadvantages in combat and as you find upgraded versions of each, they get stronger, charged effects that can have a big impact on the battlefield. Elliot also has a shield for blocking and parrying enemy attacks, adding a little more defensive nuance, and a dedicated jump, which is used for traversal and light platforming, especially within dungeons, but can also be used offensively depending on your build.
True to its classic inspirations, Elliot only features a relatively small pool of enemies, with palette swaps representing stronger variants with new abilities. But it manages to offer a good variety of fast-paced combat encounters as these enemy types are mixed together. Combat scenarios are quick and snappy so even though I could run past them when I was in a rush, I would usually stop to fight just for the fun of taking down some monsters. That's the mark of a strong combat system.
Shortly after beginning on his quest, Elliot is joined by Faie, a squeaky-voiced little fairy that only he can see and hear. She's his constant companion throughout the rest of the game, offering her own commentary and being a sounding-board for Elliot to think through his next steps. She also gains a number of magical powers, letting her light torches, teleport Elliot across gaps, and more. You can freely move Faie around within a certain radius of Elliot with the right stick, which makes her feel like a natural extension of Elliot's, and thus your, power set. Most of her powers aren't necessary to complete dungeons, but it's so much fun to "cheat" through puzzles with them, incentivizing you to explore the specially marked ruins that upgrade her powers.
During the mirror dungeon, for example, I pulled a mirror to reflect a laser in a way necessary to solve a puzzle, only to discover that I trapped myself in a corner with a gap. However, thanks to Faie, I was able to teleport my way out of the problem. That may not have been the way I was meant to solve the puzzle, but it was nice that I had the opportunity to find my own way.
The dungeon design throughout the game is well-crafted, even if most of them don't feel particularly distinct. This whole game is homage to classics like the 2D Zelda games, and you can particularly sense that in the dungeons. They iterate with ideas like the aforementioned laser-mirror reflection dungeon, or a dungeon in which I had to raise and lower water levels. In each of these dungeons, the addition of Faie's ability set gives you more room for creative experimentation and finding clever solutions that may not have been exactly intended.
Elliot can also enhance his abilities with Magicite, a very flexible upgrade system. Equipped Magicite can enhance your attack power, give passive bonuses (like increased hammer knockback), or change weapon properties (like giving you piercing arrows or a second boomerang to throw while the first one is still out). Each piece of equipment has its own Magicite box with a certain amount of slots, and you can both find pieces of Magicite in the world or turn in fragments to get random ones, gacha-style. After you've upgraded enough, your total level goes up and you get even better Magicite, so it's always worth it to be on the lookout for fragments. You can really get into the nitty-gritty of managing Magicite to optimize your build, but if you don't want to worry about it, there's also a quick-command option to let Faie create a build for you, which she does decently well to make a balanced set.
There are also accessory slots, which can change your style in even more meaningful ways. Accessories can provide several different perks, such as preventing you from getting stunned, creating a shockwave that stuns enemies whenever you land from a jump, or turning every tossable object into a bomb. I found one that gave Elliot a hovering effect on his regular jump and kept it equipped for the entire game because it was so helpful to the dungeon platforming.
And then there are just thoughtful convenience features that help modernize and sand off the rough edges. Sidequests are clearly marked with a visual indicator and a dedicated menu showing the character it centers around, and you're given ample warning if the next step in a story quest chain will nullify an ongoing sidequest. As you discover more eras, you'll often have to jump back and forth between them, which is easy because there are guideposts littered throughout the map in every era. And while waypointing can be a little difficult due to winding pathways, the overall map layout remains relatively similar in each era, which helps you to keep your bearings.
As I've been playing The Adventures of Elliot, though, I've been thinking a lot about the trope of the silent protagonist. Classics like The Legend of Zelda have been known for their hero being remarkably quiet while the action occurs around them. Much has been said about this particular odd remnant of early video games, but in Elliot we can see an example of what it's like to have that type of character written with a voice.
Elliot is remarkably earnest, even hokey, and everyone who knows or encounters him comes away feeling that he's just a swell guy. His personality often borders on feeling cloying and treacly. But at the same time, a character like this almost has to be written this way, because how else do you justify his status as a wandering do-gooder? Sometimes other characters hint at Elliot being a mercenary and taking payments, but it's clear that he does most of his work pro bono, or accepts whatever people can offer. So instead of a Link-like character who accepts his fated quest with quiet dignity--onto which we as the player can map whatever internal motivations we want--we have to stop and listen to exhaustive explanations that don't add much interesting shading or texture to the character. What does Elliot want? To be a helpful, great guy. What does everyone think of him? That he's a helpful, great guy. This type of character is mostly a cipher, so they make him utterly good-natured and well-liked and wise, instead of simply silent.
But it's not just Elliot. Faie is equally chatty and her tone is even more sickly sweet than Elliot, though you can toggle an option to make her chime in less during your exploration. And almost every quest-giver you encounter explains their motivations and their own stories in exhaustive detail. The classics that inspired Adventures of Elliot were forced into an economy of language and would get their points across with a few sentences or a paragraph at most. Without those limiters in place, these cutscenes feel overlong and overexplained. They also often stop to slowly pan over to show a point-of-interest nearby. Checking in to advance the story between dungeons just slows the pace to a crawl.
Adventures of Elliot also struggles to really capitalize on its time-hopping premise, largely because its different time periods are so nebulous. The concept appears visually and thematically inspired by Chrono Trigger. But one element that made Chrono Trigger's era-spanning story work so well is that it mapped more-or-less recognizably onto actual historical periods. You begin in a pastiche of rural modernism with burgeoning machines, travel back to something like the Dark Ages, and forward into the archetypal post-apocalyptic future. Those were marked with years to give us a sense of space and change--only 400 years passed between the dark ages and the modern era, but 1,300 years between the modern era and the apocalyptic future. When you travel to the age of primal humans and dinosaurs, it's millions of years instead of hundreds. The variance helped to establish the profound differences in time periods.
Adventures of Elliot's time periods are more vague. We explore four time periods in total that help us understand the essential sequence of historical events in this world as we travel further backward. There was a great magical society that collapsed into ruination. The modern (default) era from which Elliot hails has recovered largely due to the influence of a great king, but none of the periods map cleanly onto real-world history, and they aren't separated by clearly defined spans of time. The map remains largely the same, which is helpful for navigation, but it also makes it feel like not much has changed in this world over long stretches of time.
There are moments where the idea of an adventure spanning generations shines through. One side quest showed a bar owner treating his employees poorly until I went back in time and accidentally taught his ancestor about basic kindness, and then I got to see that lesson passed down through the generations and impact the future. Moments like that, and occasional story beats that I won't spoil, did remind me of how you could see your actions echo through time in video games like Chrono Trigger. The Adventures of Elliot just doesn't reach quite the same heights.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a surprisingly strong first attempt at reaching into this genre from a studio not known for it. The combat is snappy and fun, with loads of build customization and ability tailoring to your style. The dungeon designs are well-crafted homages that allow room for creative problem solving, and the HD-2D visual style is lovely for this type of game. I was left wanting for a story I cared more about, with characters that were more three-dimensional, in a world that felt alive and took better advantage of its time-travel concept. Those factors make the game fall short, but it creates a foundation that I hope Square Enix builds upon.
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