Square Enix is like a box of chocolates these days; you never know what you’re going to get from them. You can either get the latest Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mana game, or Octopath Traveler from them, or get something entirely new you never thought you’d be excited for. Such is the case of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. This game is, at first glance, basically “HD-2D meets oldschool The Legend of Zelda,” which is very high praise and delivers on that premise from the get-go.
The Adventures of Elliot has a little bit of what you’d expect from Nintendo’s legendary game series, with some modern advancements. It combines superb voice acting, an ambient soundtrack that kicks itself into high gear during combat, and so much more to make a retro-styled game that feels very modern. Below will be our impressions of the (admittedly) lengthy demo of the game that launched a few days ago!
A New Square Enix Hero is Born
The Adventures of Elliot opens with a mysterious cutscene of magical earrings being bestowed upon someone before introducing us to a cast of characters. The king of Huther, known as Hichard, his daughter, the Princess Heuria, their scholar Euygene, and Kaifried, a character who seems adamant to explore newly discovered ruins. Euygene suggests to the king to enlist the help of a lone adventurer who is none other than our hero of the story, Elliot.
While the story fairly quickly dives into time travel and the reveal of the villain of the game (which were predictable yet satisfying). The Adventures of Elliot truly shines in the moment-to-moment character interactions and the little stories between. Elliott’s introduction, for example, starts with him adventuring out to find a comb on a beach for some older villager that stopped by the orphanage, whom Elliott goes on regular adventures to make money for.
My favorite part was when Heuria was overhearing how Euygene was once an adventurer and used a spear, and simply could not imagine him with the spear, let alone being an adventurer like Elliot. The line delivery during that cutscene made me burst out laughing; it was fantastic. But I think everyone will enjoy Elliot and Heuria’s interactions the most. They play off each other very well, and some interactions are just simply adorable. Elliot is even invited to her chambers for one scene that definitely could’ve gone on longer. But for the brief time I played in the demo, it definitely never lost my interest and always amused me.
The Breathtaking World of The Adventures of Elliot
The Adventures of Elliot takes place in the fantastical world of Philabieldia. In the demo, you will get to explore two different ages of Philabieldia, both with their own distinct looks, treasures, and enemies to fight. The game has a metroidvania-style approach to exploration. Certain areas will be blocked off until certain unlocks are made. Such as using bombs to destroy boulders blocking the way, and even a challenge dungeon that gives a fragment of a heart piece for Elliot. I hope there are more of these with more rewards, as some heart pieces can just be found in normal dungeon chests.
Philabieldia is quite the looker when you aren’t breaking pots, smashing crates, and slashing grass (yes, you read that right) for treasure. The age you start the demo in is filled with lush greens and even a small desert segment, with the second age being more snow-covered and drab. I truly loved getting lost in exploration, and even clicking on (but not petting) cats that are just randomly placed in the game world. The world in The Adventures of Elliot is beautiful and fun to explore, just as much as it is to fight in it as well.
Simple, Methodical Combat
The combat in The Adventures of Elliot is, in a word, simple. Elliot has a single sword slash, a shield to use to block enemy attacks, and even gets to use bombs, boomerangs, a bow, and a spear. Each weapon has its own quirk. Obviously, the bow is effective at long range, but a charged shot in close quarters deals a lot of damage. On the other hand, his signature sword is the easiest to use with lower damage, but can be charged to deal a strong, long-range slash. Elliot’s arsenal is super fun to play around with, considering the variety of enemies on offer.
In the demo, there were slugs, bats, rats, flying eagles, machines, and beasts to take down. The standard slugs, bats, and machines were simply just fodder. But the flying eagles, rats, beasts, elemental beings, and later machines in the demo are pretty interesting. The rats, for example, can burrow under the ground and get the jump on you, while the elemental beings can create either projectiles or area-of-effect attacks. The bosses are no slouches either.
They are big and hulking, with patterned attacks and movements. They also, of course, take a while to take down and can introduce some cool attacks. For example, a beast boss near the end of the demo would summon these ice crystals that followed you around and would have devastating claw attacks. All of which can be offset with the customization system and made more rewarding with the no-hit chain system.
Customization and Avoiding Hits
To get the simpler system out of the way, The Adventures of Elliot, outside of accessories (which only one was available in my playthrough), has a weapon augmentation system called “Magicite”. Magicite are gems with points that restrict how many you can equip. These upgrades can range from damage increases to certain synergies. Such as the sword regenerating your stamina with each hit after using your shield to block attacks. But it’s made more interesting by how you acquire them.
Throughout the game, you will earn magicite fragments that can be spent to earn a random magicite crystal. You can spend up to 50 fragments to get 10 different crystals, with duplicates getting dissolved to refund magicite fragments. The best way to farm these fragments is by literally not getting hit while taking down enemies.
The Adventures of Elliot actively rewards player skill by making a system that progressively gives you better drops from enemies. The more of them you kill, while not getting hit, the higher your drops get, and it is noticeable. When I was at 3 stars, I was raking in almost too much money. It was definitely more than I could spend in the demo, but I know it might not be enough to buy certain late-game items in the full release. I just wish I could test the drop rates for magicite from bosses, but I am sadly getting older and always get hit once, no matter how much I save scummed.
Music, UI, and Accessibility
To cap it all off, The Adventures of Elliot is pristine from top to bottom with a few caveats. To start, the UI for the game in the menus is very simple and easy to navigate. The UI when playing the game is also very simple and clean. Nothing gets in the way, except for the constant helpful chatter from Heuria, which you can lower the frequency of, but not shut off entirely.
The music is also very good in the game, as to be expected from Square Enix and the HD-2D team. You can either have very ambient tracks that can invoke either nostalgic feelings or energetic vibes, or full-on rock and intense violin chords during boss encounters. Nothing feels out of place, and it never misses a beat.
The game’s accessibility settings are also nonexistent. There are no colorblind options, text size modifications, or anything to be found in the demo. But there are difficult options to try out. I played on normal and had a fairly easy experience.
PC and Steam Deck
As for the performance of the game, I am running The Adventures of Elliot on my PC with an RX6600, 16 gigabytes of DDR4 ram, and a Ryzen 5 5600G and an m.2 NVME SSD. The game ran at the highest settings above 80fps, reaching 120fps in dungeons at 1080p. The game is gorgeous and smooth, but there are two things that bother me the most about the experience.
When playing the game, you can have these weird LOD switching moments when going upstairs in a house in Huther, where the area loads in properly, but slowly fades away in comparison. Also, when the game panned from Huther to Elliot in the opening of the game, the entire world popped into place piece by piece during the scene, which was very jarring. It didn’t happen again afterwards, but it still made me raise my eyebrow. The performance on Valve’s Steam Deck is also a little scary. On the lowest settings at 720p and 67% screen rendering, it struggles to hit 60fps anywhere in the game; it is Deck Verified, but doesn’t feel like it. Aside from this, I experienced no bugs or crashes of any kind.
Closing Remarks on The Adventures of Elliot Demo
Despite some of the technical aspects, the demo for The Adventures of Elliot was such a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed every single moment I played of it and cannot wait to dive into the full game next month. If you have not played the demo yet, you should. It is free and available on all modern platforms. Such as Steam, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2. You will also get to keep your progress from the demo when you buy the full game!
