Hey, listen, stop me if you’ve heard this one. A young man with light hair, a magical sword and a fairy as a companion goes on a journey across time to save the princess, nay the whole kingdom, from an evil sorcerer. You cross the whole continent in your journey, from the grassy plains to the frozen tundra and even a volcano-y bit, while fighting off machines from a bygone era of high technology and magic.
No, we’re not talking about The Legend of Zelda, why would you think that? We’re talking about The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales.
Square Enix’s take on the Zelda-like action adventure is a HD-2D romp through the beautiful world of Philabieldia – a fantasy world that sounds like a child’s mispronunciation of Philadelphia. To add to the overly basic comparisons, we could call this Final Fantasy: Zelda and move on. There are so many parallels here it’s basically a pack of spaghetti, but that’s far from a bad thing. Adventures of Elliot is a very good game that you can quickly fall in love with.
Unsurprisingly, The Adventures of Elliot follows Elliot the Adventurer on his various… escapades. The writing is admittedly a little by-the-numbers on this one. Humanity now persists in a sole bastion, beset on all sides by marauding beast tribes keen on wiping humanity off the map. Your town (essentially a castle and keep) is protected by a magical princess who casts and maintains a spell of safekeeping, repelling the beast tribes who approach.
Another adventurer finds some ruins that might contain a relic that will empower humanity to reclaim its former glory. The obviously evil guy wants to go check it out, so the king sends you instead. He’s a good king and that’s a smart move. Shame it obviously backfires, the evil guy doing what you’d expect, putting a curse on the princess and letting all hell break loose.
Elliot’s exploits suddenly turn into a time-travelling tale spread across the four main ages of humanity – from the present, through the brink of extinction to the age of magic and the birth of civilisation. You do all of this while travelling with a fairy called Faie (the old English for “fairy”) that only you can see. She sort of acts as a guide, but is mostly there for her magic powers that solve puzzles by lighting lanterns or warping you across a room. This makes her a much more important part of the game than Navi, as you control her movement and positioning using the right analogue stick and can use her abilities in combat as well.
The problem with traversing the same continent four times — once for each era — is that things can get pretty samey, though The Adventures of Elliot breaks this up with a non-linear structure so you can explore each age in its entirety as soon as you’ve unlocked it. This does also mean that there’s no set order in which you gain Faie’s abilities, which can affect how much you can explore and find secrets within each age. It essentially substitutes one problem for another, now giving you a greater need to backtrack, if you deviate from the specific secret order the devs had in mind.
Naturally, it’s not just Faie who needs to power up on this adventure — Elliot has his share of Shrines of Life to visit and Shards of Life (Pieces of Heart) to collect. There are also side quests and a largely forgettable minigame to keep you occupied when you want a break from the world exploration and dungeons.
Exploring on its own can be a lot of fun thanks to the weapons and Magicite system – Square Enix love a crystal doohickey, don’t they? There are seven weapon types to pick from, which gain abilities based on the different combinations of Magicite you equip. These do everything from powering up your sword to shooting life when you run out of arrows or making your chain and sickle chuck out fireballs as you swing it. The variation is pretty cool, and which weapons you use and how you use them will naturally evolve as your progress, creating new ways to play and experience the combat as you go.
It’s also worth adding that the world looks and sounds phenomenal. It’s every bit as good as anything Square Enix does, and is therefore incredible. After the recent string of Dragon Quest HD-2D remakes, Elliot is a wonderful prelude to Final Fantasy: Resonance.
The biggest problem is that the game can outstay its welcome. Beyond revisiting the various ages and the repetition this creates – I spent the latter quarter of the game sprinting through corridors and skipping enemies because I had done them all three times already — you can end up getting a bad ending. I then spent an entire day getting slightly better endings until I unlocked New Game+ and the actual ending. This pacing at the end leaves something to be desired, which is really unfortunate in an otherwise excellent game.