The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales blends classic top-down action-adventure mechanics with Square Enix's signature HD-2D art style, offering a time-traveling narrative through the magic city of Philabieldia. Developed by Claytechworks and published by Square Enix, the game releases on June 18, 2026, with a planned price of $60/£50.
At its core, Elliot is a familiar adventure, drawing clear inspiration from titles like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Ys, and the Quintet Gaia series. Players guide Elliot through various historical periods of Philabieldia, utilizing tools to uncover secrets and navigate puzzle-filled dungeons. The game features a condensed map, a fairy companion named Faie, and a combat system that emphasizes speed and high-octane action. While the narrative is presented as a straightforward quest to save the kingdom, it is supported by engaging sidequests that explore themes of the past, memories, and dreams.
Faie, the fairy companion, plays a significant role, offering a host of abilities that can assist Elliot in combat and traversal. Her powers range from creating body doubles to clearing out enemies to warping Elliot past sections of dungeons. While Faie can be verbose, an in-game option allows players to significantly reduce her commentary, turning her into a more charming companion. Experimenting with Faie's abilities, such as transforming her into a mini-tornado to hurl enemies into pits, can lead to moments of deep satisfaction.
The combat is characterized by its rapid pace, featuring classic JRPG-style electric guitar music accompanying Elliot's actions. Boss encounters, in particular, are highlighted for their detailed pixel work and dynamic action, reminiscent of the frantic combat found in the Ys series, demanding a ballet of dashing, jumping, blocking, and parrying. The game also includes a robust Magicite system, allowing players to slot crystals into weapons for various modifiers and enhancements. This system offers considerable flexibility, enabling players to adapt their loadout mid-combat to suit immediate needs. Crafting these Magicite buffs using shards dropped by enemies provides a significant layer of customization.
Visually, The Adventures of Elliot leverages the HD-2D style to great effect, presenting stunning landmarks and creative character and enemy designs. Despite the detailed visuals, the game maintains modest system requirements and ran at a consistent 120 fps on tested hardware, suitable for its often chaotic gameplay. The game also features a surprising amount of platforming, with sections requiring leaps across gaps and dives underwater, generally feeling well-implemented due to tight controls. Accessories can further aid players in these platforming challenges.
Time travel is a central mechanic, but its implementation is noted as underwhelming by some critics. While certain locations change across eras, the overall environment and enemy variety remain largely static. For instance, settlements and enemies, such as the Ulfur beastmen, show little to no evolution across vast stretches of time. The same slugs, rat people, and flying creatures appear throughout the game, with only minor palette swaps for robotic enemies.
Despite its strengths, the game's puzzles are described as overly simplistic, often amounting to little more than pushing a block a short distance. This lack of engaging puzzle design contributes to dungeons feeling undifferentiated and forgettable. The game's narrative, while functional and wrapped in a fantasy racism metaphor, is familiar and concludes in under 20 hours for a standard playthrough. However, the narrative connects well with the game's mechanics and develops endearing characters through concise dialogue and thematic sidequests.
The structure of setting the entire game within a single, relatively small area across four distinct time periods is a bold design choice that pays off by emphasizing the evolution of history and the interconnectedness of stories across generations. This thematic focus is reflected even in the world map, which layers ages upon each other, mirroring the dungeon design. While The Adventures of Elliot may not surpass its influential predecessors, its focus on brevity, thrills, and a genuine appreciation for history earns it a solid place within the genre.