Square Enix knew what they’re doing when they revealed and announced The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millenium Tales on a Nintendo Direct. The latest game to incorporate the HD-2D aesthetic isn’t an RPG per se, it’s described as an action game. Rather, an action-adventure game.
I assume most folks would know what’s it about, but for me who have spotty knowledge and experience with Nintendo games, it wasn’t until the recently released Prologue Demo that I put two and two together. The Adventures Of Elliot is Square Enix and Team Asano’s take on The Legend Of Zelda, specifically the 2D top-down ones.
I never played the original Zelda, that includes the much-lauded and seminal The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but it’s not hard to make the connections. The way the sword swings. The overworld map. The way the dungeons are laid out (including combat arenas where the room is locked until every enemy is taken down). The shops. Currency found from cut grass and smashed pottery.
This is not to say The Adventures Of Elliot is a Zelda rip-off, though it’s undeniably inspired by it.
The Adventures Of Elliot has its own charm that stands out. The game title may sound generic, but Elliot the Adventurer here deserves the center stage. He’s charming, he has character, and the perfect hero for an adventure like this. He’s not alone in the journey, accompanied by the princess Heuria who’s magically in Elliot’s ear(ring), spectating and commentating on whatever you do out in the world.
While most modern games express this duo dynamic through an accompanying sidekick character (The Last Of Us, Ratchet & Clank, or more recently Pragmata), The Adventures Of Elliot is a bit more creative with how it handles the hero’s handler by having the princess appear in the bottom left of the screen. She’s always there, cycling through the few different expression images with just enough animation to not look like a static PNG file. She’s also overlaid over the horizontal black bars that appear when cutscenes happens.
Lore wise, it’s long-range communications via the power of magic.
But essentially, Elliot has a dedicated VTuber backseating him. “Try using the shield,” Heuria politely suggest as I forget to block again from enemy’s charge attack. Well, excuse me, princess.
But really, I find the dynamic exceptionally charming, and would like to see how actual VTubers that livestreams the game figure out how to play off on this. Though Hueria won’t play the same role after the end of the Prologue Demo, I reckon. The game’s promotion makes it clear Elliot is mostly accompanied by a fairy.
The Prologue Demo sets a good start for The Adventures Of Elliot. Just enough exposition to make the world enticing and worth investing in with enough action and adventure to keep you hungry for more. There are secrets to discover, optional challenge dungeons, side paths away from the main quest and a passive upgrade system powered by RNG to keep things interesting in the long haul.
It’s quite generous in content too. The demo has at least three hours of story, progression and side-quests you can do. You can’t explore most of the world, not because it’s a demo but the progression for some of the side dungeons are gated by abilities you only can get in the full game. Yet it’s generous enough to let you earn four of the seven different weapons Elliot can use (including bombs), and a short tease on the whole time travel aspect of the adventure.
They are many parts of the demo where I thought it could’ve ended but it kept going and going. It ends on a strong cliffhanger point in a way that will entice you to see what’s coming next, especially after spending this long with this save that can be carried over to the full game. It reminded me how generous Final Fantasy XVI’s demo was, it ran so long just to set up an emotional crescendo.
The Octopath Traveler series didn’t quite grab me despite it being an RPG, a genre I’m familiar with. I tried a few entries, including the latest Octopath Traveler 0, and I couldn’t find myself motivated to finish it. The Adventures Of Elliot didn’t have that effect on me, though I should note that my enthusiasm for the game, and how much I’ve been enjoying the demo, might also be because I never really experience the real deal Zelda games.
If you want to experience something similar to a Legend Of Zelda game with this particular style of gameplay without playing on a Switch or Switch 2, The Adventures Of Elliot will be here to heed your call for adventure.
The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millenium Tales will be out on June 18 for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. In Asia, the PC (Steam) version comes out a day later, on June 19.
Physical editions of The Adventures OF Elliot: The Millenium Tales will also be available in Southeast Asia for PS5 and Switch 2, distributed by Bandai Namco.
Demo played on PS5.