A Charming Adventure Rough Around the Edges and Ages – The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Review
The Adventures of Elliot is the newest IP from Team Asano. It features the same 2D-HD artstyle with crisp character sprites and backgrounds as seen in the recent Dragon Quest 1-3 HD-2D Remake and Octopath Traveler 0. From what I’ve played there were no references to characters or story in other Square Enix games. You can play Adventures of Elliot without having played any other games and in fact it’s an extremely accessible game, having many difficulty options as well as an option to revive your character on the spot with in-game currency.
I’ll provide a quick synopsis of the first hour of the story without giving any spoilers. You play as Elliot who is an adventurer in the world of Philabieldia. To be honest, I didn’t like the name of the world either but the game doesn’t mention it too much. It takes place more specifically in the Kingdom of Huther which is a much better fantasy name.
Elliot as an adventurer does many jobs such as finding medicine from ingredients outside the kingdom as well as saving explorers who were searching ruins. Elliot works for King Hichard and although the plot starts off with simple errands it becomes a save the world story very quickly, with Elliot exploring portals leading to many different time periods and also finding Fae the Fairy as a traveling companion.
The gameplay is a mixture of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and the older Ys games such as Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim. In other words, the game has all its characters and enemies represented by sprites moving over a world you explore. It’s not a 2D top-down game, you still explore 3D backgrounds using a 2D sprite. Although jumping over gaps was strange at first with a 2D sprite it grew on me quickly.
The combat is action based meaning you have full control of your character to attack foes and get hit too. Elliot can attack and defend with a shield through blocking or parrying at the correct itme. Some of the tools he uses include bows, bombs, healing vials, a hammer and more, all of which also have upgrades and are slowly drip-fed as the player progresses through the game.
There are two currencies dropped by enemies and found as rewards: tul and magicite fragments. Tul is just money to spend in shops to replenish your consumable items or buy new accessories and magicite fragments is used to roll for magicite crystals, passives you equip to your weapons to make them stronger such as having a higher critical hit. It’s random what effects you get using magicite but I found the game easy, you can find good ones as rewards while exploring, and I found myself rolling in magicite crystals by the endgame. You can get creative with builds but I found myself just stacking as many critical boosting passives, leading to most of my attacks being critical hits.
Fae also gets more abilities to use and is controlled using the right analog stick and L1, with abilities such as fire, sprint, vacuum, duplication, and more. There are puzzles to solve, sidequests to do, and many optional ruins to explore, all of which contain bonuses such as upgrading your item capacity and upgrading your health in quarters at a time, with four quarter shards of life adding an extra heart.
This title uses shards of life and not hearts, but you can easily see the inspiration the developers had from The Legend of Zelda games especially looking at the bombs, health vials, and arrows too. I understand that certain genres do have rules of how the gameplay has to be but I would’ve preferred if Elliot had more of its own kind of tools. It doesn’t have to be so heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda with the quarter health, bombs, and arrows. Sure many games have these too but all of these put together really makes it obvious it’s inspired by The Legend of Zelda and it really makes it seem like the developers of The Adventures of Elliot played it way too safe.
The big difference between The Adventures of Elliot and the old top-down The Legend of Zelda games is that this title has many accessibility options and modern quality of life game design decisions. Although the difficulty can be changed with a variety of different options, I found that the hardest difficulty would have you game over within a hit or two, and the lower difficulties would be too easy. Although it’s a common complaint I really would prefer if developers could make games more difficult without bloating the enemies’ health and increasing enemy damage output. I understand that in certain video game genres this can be tricky but the extra effort would’ve been appreciated.
Elliot can be contrasted against with Mina the Hollower, a game I would also recommend that is inspired by top-down Zelda but is far more challenging, with many collectibles that are very challenging to find. Elliot is just too easy, sometimes in a way that makes it bland. You don’t have to scour the world in Elliot because most collectibles are shoved in your face.
I really like how the sidequests glow green on the mini-map to differentiate it from regular NPC dialog and the game also warns you if you’re going to miss them due to progressing the story too far. Some sidequest deadlines are a little tight due to how the story progresses but I really appreciate the game providing warning, That is an example of a good quality of life improvement. On the other hand, the enemy variety and enemy attacks are very lackluster. Some end-game bosses are challenging and fun to fight, but speaking broadly most enemies and mini-bosses are pretty bland.
The collectibles in this title are also not fun to find. I like how detailed and intuitive the world map is but it feels like so many collectibles are thrown in your face. There are big temples that award shard of life pieces but they all seem very short and easy as well as combat arena temples that provide more accessory slots. There are also temples that award Fae with new fairy abilities to use, but they’re really more of a tutorial for a new power you’ll obtain.
The puzzles aren’t really that good, it’s really you either have the tool or fairy ability to use or not though sometimes you can unintentionally sequence break certain sections. The puzzles are generally just bombing a cracked wall, lighting up unlit pedestals with Fae’s fire ability, pushing stones onto a button, aiming lasers correctly, or pressing a button that opens a timed gate and using Fae’s running ability to sprint past the gate in time.
It’s not to say I don’t enjoy a game that’s on the easy side where I can relax and turn off my brain, but I’d really like it if there was a game that had difficulty and puzzles somewhere between Adventures of Elliot and Mina the Hollower. I was hoping for more complex dungeons, at least closer towards the end, but instead the endgame dungeon seemed like more of a victory lap where you just follow a straightforward path. Many dungeons require the player to find keys in treasure chests to open locked doors just like you see in many of The Legend of Zelda games. Yet I found this game to be less complex than that. Even the most complex dungeon in this game had only 2 keys and 2 locked doors and it was linear, meaning the player would put the blue key into the blue lock, and then find a red key for a red lock therein. I never saw a situation where you’d get 1 blue key to unlock one of 3 blue locked doors and within that door you’d find more keys. If the developers didn’t want to make the dungeons at least a little more complex then the developers should’ve just made the dungeons without the locks and keys, and instead just make the dungeons like Ys where you explore, solve puzzles, do platforming, fight enemies and find treasure.
Fae the Fairy will also give you the solutions to the puzzles with dialog as soon as you encounter the puzzle and she gives out far too many intermediate steps as well. I understand that these games are developed with a younger audience in mind, but I would rather have the companion at least wait before telling me the solution. It’s the same problem as in God of War Ragnarök where Atreus gives the solution away immediately without even letting the player solve the puzzle. You can turn down the frequency of how much she talks in the game’s options so the issue can be mitigated. Still, I believe there could’ve been a more elegant solution, such as having another button that would be dedicated for asking Fae for help instead whenever you want.
Fae is always present in all the cutscenes in the bottom left corner of the screen after you find her. She reacts with many different emotions and has a one or two liner after every scene in the game. Fae is a child-like fairy, so I can understand how she can be grating at times but I generally didn’t don’t mind her behavior. The dialog I really dislike from her is the tutorial dialog because she’s holds the player’s hand far too much. On the other hand, her comments regarding the game’s lore can be fun and insightful sometimes.
I really liked the sidequests in this game. All sidequests are fully voiced and most of them feature major supporting characters in the game. The sidequests aren’t too intensive, they usually tell you to gather an item or defeat an enemy or even just talk to a character. I really liked these in a narrative sense because they added a lot of extra scenes with the supporting characters.
Although I didn’t actually like fulfilling the sidequests themselves since it was just gathering items and defeating enemies, I really liked watching the sidequest stories unfold. The sidequests really compliment the main scenario of the game as well and they feature many twists. I don’t want to reveal spoilers and I’ll simplify it. One sidequest has Elliot learn about a villain’s sister who cared for him and it added significant backstory to the villain. Another sidequest has Elliot work for a villain, leading to Elliot refusing to fulfill the request.
These sidequests all show Elliot’s character and have the theme of living together in peace with all kinds of people. I really do like the message that the game is going for, it’s similar to Metaphor ReFantazio’s message or even That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. The sidequests take place over many different time periods in the past you can warp to and the most interesting part is that doing a sidequest will change the current time period. So if Elliot helped someone construct a building in the past, it turns out their descendants will end up being a major construction firm in Elliot’s present time. It changes the dialog of the NPCs and it was a nice attention to detail.
The game does have its downsides too. Although I really like the message the game is going for, the game as a whole plays it extremely safe. Elliot is always very positive and doesn’t really have a character arc. The game itself doesn’t take much risk either, the premise of the game is just Elliot accepting orders from the King and exploring the lands borrowing many gameplay mechanics from The Legend of Zelda and Ys.
I was really hoping for more conflict and risks taken in this game. Elliot always feels like a boring protagonist who is always good. I still think the developers could’ve added more conflict to play into this and make it work. I really liked the scene (in an optional sidequest surprisingly) where Elliot refuses to fulfill a request for someone because it went against his morals. It was a very welcome surprise because Elliot drew his sword and the villain actually walked away unlike what you’d expect in most games. Although Elliot was still being preachy and nice there was actually some conflict! Imagine if the plot had more conflicts and complexity, such as if Elliot had only 1 shipment of medicine and had to choose only one town to give it to or if Elliot had to negotiate with a villain to get medicine to save someone important to him. It doesn’t have to be obvious like this but if there was just some way that Elliot was at odds with himself or if we could see Elliot have at least some form of character development.
The plot has awkward pacing all over the place and it takes a while to get going. There’s a midpoint that’s phenomenal, but right after that the game loses steam and becomes aimless. There are many really amazing twists but they’re mostly regulated to right before the ending of the game and require you to get the true ending of the game. The game barely has missable content and you can get the true ending by just reloading your save with everything kept and exploring the world more to solve the mystery. It’s not like an old JRPG from the 90s where you need to restart, it’s a modern game so it’s not bad at all. Even so, I still really dislike how back-loaded the plot is and I wonder how many people are going to just get a bad ending and put the game down. The lack of post-game annoys me because it’d be nice if there was just one extra dungeon or something where I could use all the tools and fairy abilities in a challenging environment. In a way this game’s true ending feels like a post-game but structured as the main scenario.
The most unique mechanic of Adventures of Elliot is the time travel mechanic. Once you progress the story enough you can warp back and forth between different time periods. The problem is that there’s a lot of asset reuse for the different time periods. Don’t get me wrong, all developers reuse their assets whether it’s art or animation, and it’s a smart technique. In this title the asset re-use was not done tactfully at all.
Elliot’s regular time period is called the Age of Safety, and after a few hours into the game he unlocks access to the Age of Reconstruction, a time period in the past where humanity struggled to fend off beast-men attacks. The Age of Reconstruction isn’t a happy kingdom like where Elliot is from. Instead, it shows everyone with tattered clothing, no crops, barely any food, few medical supplies, the walls are practically crumbling and people are getting into fights with each other regularly. Although all characters in this time period are new the city is just the same kingdom but it’s not a run-down kingdom instead! The roads have the same structure.
This problem extends further too because the entire world is reused for this different time period. In other words both timelines have the exact same world map and dungeons just coated in a different paint, almost like different seasons rather than being a different time period. There are variations such as some dungeon parts being blocked off with debris and some dungeons not existing at all in certain time periods. The best analogy is that it’s like how Dragon Age 2 recycled dungeons. They copied a base dungeon design and then closed off or added more tunnels to make different dungeons in a minimal way.
To make matters even worse there are four time periods in the game. Meaning it’s not just twice, it’s four times the developers recycled the same city, world map and dungeons. You unlock the fourth time period rather late in the game, so I explored the world map almost completely for the other three time periods. Then as soon as I unlocked the fourth time period and saw the same world map again I unfortunately felt a sense of dread because I’d have to explore the same map and dungeons all over again all at once. I felt that this kind of asset reuse was a major misstep from the developers. All time periods have the same city in the bottom-right corner of the world map and that’s where 99% of the NPCs are located. For a game focused on adventuring I asked myself why wasn’t there other smaller cities?
There are no other towns in the game aside from the one in four time periods and barely any NPCs are found randomly on the world map. The way the game is structured makes it repetitive and feels antithetical to adventuring. I understand that from the developers point of view this appeared to be a smart idea since they could add more content if they recycled the world map and dungeons, but I really believe that the developers should’ve instead focused on a fewer number of time periods with make new content in those time periods instead. One idea is the developers could’ve focused on two time periods and made the world map substantially different such as Pangaea compared to the continents nowadays.
To explain the issue more clearly, let’s say that there’s a dungeon that exists in all four time periods. What this game does is it’ll make the dungeon shorter in three of the time periods by closing off existing tunnels, and only give you the full dungeon in only one of the time periods. Fae will even comment that you hit a dead end and that there’s probably more to explore within a different time period. Even if it’s only a warp away it gets very repetitive warping to all the different time periods just to explore the one dungeon completely and this phenomena happens with almost all dungeons in the game. I really think the developers should’ve just made a higher quantity of shorter dungeons to spread throughout all the varying time periods instead such as how Octopath Traveler 0 did it. No matter how you cut it most people aren’t going to like exploring a dungeon four times to obtain all the collectibles, especially in an action adventure game like this where character progression is tied so inextricably to collecting items around the world.
Aside from poor structure of the time periods the graphics, both character sprites and backgrounds look great and the sound track is phenomenal. I complained previously that the earlier HD-2D games had way too many special effects that strained my eyes and made it hard to see what was on the screen. Thankfully all the special effects have been toned down and the game still looks beautiful.
I really liked all of the character portraits that were on the screen while the character talked. It’s only done for major characters but you’ll see it quite often not just in the main story but you’ll see it in many of the sidequests as well. Some of the characters with fewer appearances sometimes looked a bit stiff in their pose but most characters are drawn extremely well, with many very expressive poses. The voice acting in both Japanese and English are top notch. The dialog does feel a tad long-winded at times especially at the introduction and I really believe the writers could’ve removed a lot of unnecessary dialog in the main story and gotten the message across.
The Adventures of Elliot is a flawed game but I really enjoyed playing it and I resonated with its story. It’s very accessible and if you want a relaxing time you should check it out. It’s not grindy at all and you’ll never have to look up a guide for collectibles because of how easy it is. The only somewhat noticeable flaw is all the asset reuse in the world map, cities and dungeon. Even so, the world map was amazing to explore the first time. I really enjoyed all the secret passages as well as the variety of biomes including dense forests, dry deserts, wintry tundras and lava caves. It took me about 25 hours to complete the game to the true ending with the majority of its collectibles acquired.
The dungeons have solid level design and flow naturally. Though a bit simple, you’ll never get lost. It’s just that re-exploring these regions in different time periods really got on my nerves towards the end. Aside from that the gameplay is very simple but addicting. I liked finding trials to upgrade my life shards and although there could’ve been more enemy variety it was fun to whack enemies with my sword and use magicite to upgrade my weapons. It was really rewarding randomly stumbling upon weapon upgrades in dungeons too. The start has odd pacing especially in the beginning, but if you stick with it to the end (and I mean the true end) you will find a many interesting twists and a really heartfelt story that is very unique even among its contemporaries.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Review
Our Score: Great
Pros
- Great HD-2D character sprites, artwork and voice acting.
- Combat is simple but very addicting. Upgrade system is fun, where you combine different passive effects.
- Fun world map to explore and many great dungeons full of collectibles.
- The game holds your hand a lot and the puzzles really don’t make you think at all.
- Excessive re-use of assets such as in the cities, world map, and dungeons. They’re fun to explore the first time, but become very repetitive on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th visit.
- Story pacing is very slow at times especially the beginning. There is payoff but it’s all back-loaded
– Brandon Harris
Reviewed on the PC (Steam)
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