Square Enix's latest game, The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, is an HD-2D action role-player that draws clear inspiration from classic SNES titles such as Secret Of Mana, The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, and Chrono Trigger. While the combat is enjoyable and the visuals are polished, the game is hampered by tedious storytelling, shallow time-travel mechanics, and a heavy reliance on nostalgia without introducing many new ideas.
A New IP with Familiar Roots
Despite its generic HD-2D aesthetic and obvious homages to 16-bit role-players, The Adventures Of Elliot is a brand new intellectual property. The story follows the titular adventurer Elliot, who lives in a kingdom besieged by beast tribes. Tasked with exploring ancient ruins beyond the castle walls, Elliot discovers a portal that allows time travel. However, the narrative is marred by excessively verbose dialogue and uninteresting characters. According to the review, players may dread meeting new characters due to their lengthy life stories, a hallmark of Square Enix's Team Asano that detracts from the experience.
Combat and Puzzles: A Mixed Bag
The combat system is reminiscent of Secret Of Mana, featuring simple but fast-paced top-down action with a modern parry mechanic. Players can use Zelda-like items such as a boomerang, bombs, and a hammer. However, enemy variety is lacking, with the game resorting to palette swaps to denote tougher foes—a less agreeable nod to the past. Unlike Secret Of Mana, The Adventures Of Elliot includes proper puzzles, but dungeon designs heavily borrow from specific Zelda games, including a water temple and a mirror-reflection puzzle, which may feel unoriginal to seasoned players.
Faie: A Mechanically Interesting but Irritating Companion
Elliot is aided by a fairy named Faie, visible only to him. Faie possesses magic powers, including teleportation, and can be controlled separately via the right stick for short distances. This makes her one of the most mechanically interesting additions to the game, though her personality is described as intensely irritating. The review notes that while Faie aids dungeon exploration, her presence does little to elevate the overall storytelling.
Time-Travel: Woefully Underused
The time-travel premise, presented similarly to Chrono Trigger, is mishandled. The game features four time periods, but all look nearly identical—a minor variations of the same fantasy kingdom. Unlike Chrono Trigger's journey from the stone age to the far future, Elliot's time travel is purely narrative, with maps remaining largely unchanged across eras. Some quests involve influencing the past to affect the future, but these are few, making the time-travel conceit feel like a mere homage rather than a meaningful gameplay element.
Customization and Visuals
Players have significant control over Elliot's build, with customizable magic and special abilities. The HD-2D graphics are praised as never looking better, adding a layer of visual appeal. However, beyond combat and customization, the game relies heavily on nostalgia, which the review argues is not a substitute for new ideas. The most interesting aspect of The Adventures Of Elliot is how it illustrates that new IP is not as important as new ideas; despite being technically original, it feels more generic than many established franchises.
Verdict: A Disappointing Homage
The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales earns a score of 6/10. The game is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, priced at £54.99. It was released on 18th June 2026 and is rated 12. The review concludes that while the combat is fun and the visuals are impressive, the storytelling is a chore, the time-travel aspect is underutilized, and the heavy-handed nostalgia fails to mask the lack of originality. Pros include enjoyable combat, Faie's interesting mechanics, and extensive customization options. Cons include dull storytelling, uninteresting characters, insufficient enemy variety, and overfamiliar nostalgia bait.
