The announcement of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales last year was a welcome surprise. With the exception of Star Ocean: The Second Story R, Square Enix's impressive HD-2D engine was used for traditional turn-based games like the Octopath Traveler series and the remakes of the first three entries in the Dragon Quest series, or for a tactical RPG like Triangle Strategy, so the prospect of playing a top-down action RPG with HD-2D visuals felt enticing right from the get-go.
The playable demos released for the game ahead of its release only confirmed the potential of the experience, which takes elements from some of the best classic Japanese action RPGs such as the original Secret of Mana and the Ys series, combining them with the adventuring and progression mechanics of games like the classic The Legend of Zelda games - A Link to the Past, most of all - and Matrix Software's PSX exclusive Alundra.
With such illustrious inspirations backing the experience, expectations for The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales were unsurprisingly high, considering we haven't seen a game like this in a long time. After spending over 30 hours with the game, I can confidently say that the first HD-2D action RPG is a very solid game, but some flaws prevent it from reaching the same heights as its illustrious inspirations.
A Journey Through Time
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is set on the continent of Philabieldia, a land overrun by monsters and beast tribes. Humanity’s last bastion is the Kingdom of Huther, which is kept safe from outside threats by a powerful barrier spell called the "Spell of Safekeeping." This magical shield is cast and maintained continuously by Princess Heuria, who is in turn bound to the castle to channel this magic.
At some point, new mysterious ruins are discovered near the kingdom, and King Hichard orders Elliot, an adventurer, to investigate them. Accompanied by the Princess, who can communicate with Elliot from afar using his magical earring, the adventurer discovers within the ruins a Doorway of Time, allowing him to travel back in time.
While the King and the adventurer's intentions were pure, other notables within the Kingdom have other ideas. Lead advisor Minister Kaifried seeks to use the Doorway of Time for his own gain and rewrite history, forcing the King to seek Elliot's help once again, not knowing that he is sending the adventurer on a journey through time where he will get to meet his faithful companion, the fairy Faie, and contend with an ancient and dark enemy with the worst of intentions.
Attempting to capture the feel of classic top-down RPGs, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales' story isn't particularly unique, but it's not terribly bad either. The best term that comes to my mind is "cozy." Nothing is particularly exciting, no character receives deep development, many of the story elements are very similar to the game's main inspirations, and yet everything flows surprisingly well from the beginning to the game's different endings. With side quests doubling down on this coziness the game exudes, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales provides a fair enough experience overall, granted one doesn't expect an intricate narrative.
Braving The Dangers of Philabieldia
Much like with the story, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales' gameplay doesn't exactly attempt to hide which games it has been inspired by. However, in this case, the mix is definitely better, and has some unique elements here and there that make it stand out.
At its heart, Elliot's adventure through time doesn't play much differently from classic entries in the aforementioned series like Zelda, Mana, and Ys. Controlling the protagonist with a top-down view, players get to explore Philabieldia across four different eras, defeating enemies with real-time combat, opening chests to collect items that upgrade Elliot's abilities, Tul (the main currency), and Magicite Fragments, and exploring caverns and other dungeons filled with enemies, traps, and some surprisingly well-crafted platforming challenges.
All this is made very enjoyable not only by the snappy controls and the pace of the experience, which is very close to Zelda: A Link to the Past, but by its combat mechanics, which are one of the highlights of the game. Elliot can assign two weapons from seven types to the two attack buttons and use either at will. Besides unleashing a basic attack, it is also possible to unleash a charged attack, which can be further charged as more powerful variants of weapons are found - a mechanic that is very reminiscent of Secret of Mana. As each weapon has some unique properties and uses, they all synergize surprisingly well with others, opening up a lot of interesting possibilities, which are massively expanded by the Magicite system.
A Continent Of Magical Possibilities
The Magicite System is very simple on paper, but it is, without a doubt, the standout feature of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. Taking the Magicite Fragments dropped by enemies to certain shops, it is possible to use them to roll Magicite, which is divided into different quality tiers. These items, which are equipped in a Magicite Box whose capacity can be expanded, grant a variety of bonuses, ranging from simple attack or critical rate ups to unique effects like modifiers for the basic and charge attacks, additional attack properties, bonuses for alternating attacks with different weapons, and so on.
Much like the basic weapons, these Magicite effects have great synergies with others, unlocking buildcrafting in a type of experience that usually leaves little freedom to the player in this sense. This also makes every weapon viable, even those with limited ammo like Bombs and the Bow: with the right setup, you can either make each attack devastating or enable almost unlimited ammo.
Unfortunately, the random element to obtaining Magicite via rolls can make it difficult to put together the perfect build early in the game, but the system is pretty generous in handing out new Magicite often, partially refunding the cost of shards for any duplicate piece. As such, this system works great as a substitute to a traditional experience points system, which the game doesn't have, providing an incentive to continue fighting enemies as much as possible (and amassing Chain defeats for increased drop rates) even a dozen hours into the adventure.
The Fairy Doesn't Pull Any Punches
Besides offering all the combat options above, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales provides a simple defensive option via a stamina-powered shield (and a just guard later on) and, more importantly, some additional options with tons of depth offered by the fairy Faie, which have offensive, defensive, traversal, and puzzle-solving applications.
At the most basic level, Faie, who can be controlled freely with the right stick or by a second player, or can be set to different behaviors, will attack any enemy she comes into contact with. However, her attacks can be enhanced by using five different abilities, including the ability to ignite enemies on fire, warp Elliot to her position (which can also work as an evasive maneuver), dash, and more. Much like the rest of the combat mechanics, these abilities synergize well with Elliot's kit, resulting in an experience that allows for tons of creativity, especially with upgraded powers.
To make an example, the Warp ability can be enhanced so that Elliot turns invisible for a few seconds. This window of opportunity can be used, for example, to strike enemies from behind, plant a Bomb nearby, charge an attack with the Hammer, and more. To make another, if you set Faie up to stay ahead of Elliot, activate the ability to set enemies on fire, and use the Hammer, you can slam an enemy towards Faie, who will then burn the enemy, letting Elliot activate any special Magicite effect that requires the enemy to be afflicted by a status ailment.
These are only two of the possibilities I came across, and there are so many more that it's really difficult to get bored by the game's combat system. Although enemy variety isn't the best, the creativity that the game's core mechanics provide makes taking them down extremely fun. As they do exploration, due to how the character progression mechanics work.
Time Hasn't Changed You A Lot, Philabieldia
As The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales does away with the typical character progression seen in action RPGs, every character upgrade is locked behind items. Besides Magicite, Elliot's equipment, which includes accessories for unique passives, the aforementioned weapons, and shields, can only be enhanced by finding the corresponding item. Same goes for his health, which can only be increased by finding Shards of Life to put together a full health container. Faie's abilities, likewise, require physically obtaining the upgrade to be enhanced.
With items at the core of character progression, exploration is strongly incentivized. As the map features a lot of optional locations, going off the beaten path yields a lot of benefits, besides just experiencing more of the game's solid combat system. Some of these optional locations are nothing more than caverns with a few corridors, but others offer significantly more, especially the Trials, which involve putting Elliot and Faie's abilities to proper use. In some cases, you will also be racing against the clock, and the better you do, the better your rewards will be.
With four different ages to explore and so many optional locations, one may think The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a massive game. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. If anything, the world design is the game's most prominent weakness, failing to fully leverage the time-travel element of the experience, which the story does significantly better. Instead of offering changes between the different eras, the map is essentially the same across all of them, with only some minor differences, mostly relegated to the main town hub.
As such, pretty much every location in Philabieldia is recycled between time periods, resulting in a lot of masqueraded backtracking. Dungeons themselves suffer from this, although repeated visits to story dungeons are in no way required to complete the game. Here, at the very least, the changes feel more impactful, as new sections open up in different eras to offer more puzzles, combat encounters, and navigational challenges.
Even though the game's world is small, the location design is solid, with moderately intricate layouts and plenty to do within them. Though the puzzles are generally simple, they do require players to put Elliot and Faie's abilities to good use, so clearing them feels satisfying enough. Similarly, the bosses at the end of each bigger dungeon often pose a significant challenge with their rather varied movesets and designs, especially at Hard and Very Hard difficulties. Hard difficulty, in particular, I found to be well balanced: it's a significant step above Normal, but it's never so difficult that it could be considered unfair.
Looking Good, But Sounding a Little Off
Using the HD-2D engine we have seen in action since the days of the first Octopath Traveler, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales looks as one might expect, with detailed pixel-art sprites navigating a low-poly world. Despite not being the best-looking game of the bunch, Elliot's adventure looks pleasing enough, its visuals essentially on par with those seen in last year's Octopath Traveler 0, though there's a slight visibility issue in some densely forested areas, especially at lower resolutions.
With the visuals being so undemanding, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales should run well on most system configurations from the past 5 or so years. On my system (i7-13700F CPU, RTX 4080 GPU, 32 GB RAM), I easily maxed out my monitor's 120 Hz refresh rate at native 4K resolution with the game's few graphics settings set at maximum, with absolutely no frame rate drops even with multiple enemies on screen and special attacks flying off in all directions.
While The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales generally looks as good as most HD-2D games to date, it doesn't always sound as well as it looks. This has nothing to do with its soundtrack, which is definitely solid and has a few standout pieces, but with its English voice acting. While Elliot and Faie sound good (though the fairy gets a little grating over time due to how much she talks), the rest of the voice acting ranges from acceptable to really stiff. Thankfully, the game does have a Japanese voice option which quickly solves the issue, but still, it was surprising to experience voice acting so uneven in a game in 2026 from a major publisher.
Closing Comments
Despite the small world size and the missed opportunity to leverage the time-travel premise to deliver more, I rather enjoyed my time with The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. The game especially succeeds at creating a web of simple mechanics that play off each other, offering as much simplicity or complexity as the player wishes without adding unnecessary bloat. As such, this tribute to classic top-down RPGs is more than worthy of the time and money of fans of the genre who have never forgotten the glory days of Secret of Mana, classic Ys, and Zelda: A Link to the Past and want to experience more of them in a slightly more modern format.
PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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