by Myles ObenzaIn 2018, Square Enix released Octopath Traveler, a love letter to the retro turn-based JRPGs of yore, where they coined the now household term HD-2D. Since then, we’ve seen a handful of other HD-2D titles, like two Octopath follow-ups, three Dragon Quest remakes, and even a wonderfully deep tactics game in Triangle Strategy. This summer, the team makes its first foray into real-time RPG gameplay with The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. A mouthful of an endearingly odd title Square’s been known for over recent years, Elliot takes the HD-2D visual style and moves the action from turn-based to reactionary real-time combat.
I recently had the opportunity to play about an hour of the game during a visit to Square Enix’s offices in Los Angeles, and I came away excited for the gameplay, but slightly worried about the story.
My demo was prefaced that story details would be at a minimum during my visit, and that the focus instead would be centered solely on gameplay and exploration. And while the latter two points offer an incredibly fun and engaging experience, I couldn’t help but wonder about the narrative’s quality, especially since Elliot is a time travel tale, and those can be hard to get right. In any case, the world of Elliot, called (checks notes) Philabieldia, is yet another gorgeous HD-2D rendered sandbox that I couldn’t look away from. My time with the game started in a dungeon roughly three to four hours into the main story. From here, I could either face the dungeon’s boss or leave to explore wider areas. But it’s here where I got my first taste of Elliot‘s combat and companion system with Faie, a fairy who functions as a puzzle-solving and traversal tool.
For example, you can control Faie using the right stick for a host of different uses. Once you find the requisite abilities, she can be used to light torches and cross chasms. She does serve more purposes, but they weren’t present in this demo. In combat, you’ll use up to seven different weapon types that can all be upgraded by finding stronger versions in chests or as quest rewards throughout the world. You can equip two weapons at any given time to suit your preferred playstyle, and a hotkey weapon wheel is implemented for changing things up on the fly. The combat is fast and chaotic, so being able to switch to a bow to take out long-range enemies or do a sword spin when crowded is an important feature that really helped with the frenetic feel.
Elliot takes clear inspiration from 2D Legend of Zelda titles and the Final Fantasy Adventure series. One of your equippable weapons are bombs, and you can use these to not only deal big damage to enemies, but to crumble cracked walls to open up new paths and find secrets. You can even find different Charms scattered throughout the world that serve as accessories for stat boosts, but some offer bespoke uses like the ability to jump, much like what you’d see when using the Roc’s Cape from Zelda games. Customization seems to be a crucial pillar to Elliot’s gameplay loop, and from what I’ve played, it’s very intuitive and fun, with plenty of player agency to please just about everyone. There are multiple routes to the same objective, and the world is sprawling; there’s no wrong way to approach a given scenario, so find what you like and stick with it.
Exploring the world of Philabieldia was the other key aspect of my demo. The entire world was open from the jump, and in a fun twist, I was able to traverse the land during three different eras. Changing up the timeframe, which is done quickly and seamlessly, offers a much more dynamic experience. It also opens the doors for much more interesting design choices; the world map is relatively small, but being able to change up the landscape during different eras means there’s so much more to do than meets the eye. For example, during the Age of Reconstruction, the village of Littlehope is true to its namesake; it’s a rundown, dreary shantytown. But during the Age of Safekeeping, it’s a bustling town with a prosperous marketplace known as the Kingdom of Huther. The world is stitched together via the overworld map and caves or other points of interest, with plenty of verticality and ways to reach your destination.
There are, however, a slightly overwhelming amount of icons and points of interest on the map, and I was never too clear just which icon represented which activity or where the main objective was. I imagine this won’t be as much of a flashbang in the final build once we start the game from scratch, but it’s hard to ignore the sheer volume of things to do. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as most gamers enjoy checking boxes, but at least in this demo it was a bit much.
Dungeon delving and fighting monsters aren’t the only activities I got up to during my time with Elliot. There are plenty of side quests and minigames to engage with, and there are even cats strewn about the world you can pet that my PR handler emphasized is “very important later”.
If you’re newer to real-time combat like this or your reflexes aren’t up to par, there are plenty of difficulty and accessibility options in the final build to help make your experience as smooth as possible. You can change difficulty on the fly, so if you’re struggling on some boss encounters, the option to make it easier is always there, which is what I ended up doing. My time with Elliot wasn’t difficult, but my demo wrapped up with a boss fight against a pair of golems that proved surprisingly challenging. This isn’t a Soulslike game, but the pattern recognition and patience we’ve come to learn from games in that genre can be easily translated here when it comes to boss battles. Once I defeated them, my early hands-on with Elliot came to a close, and I left eagerly awaiting more time with the game’s world and combat.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales launches June 18 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. We also had an interview with Team Asano about the game that you can read here.
