The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review – An essential action RPG

Watch your back, Link, there’s a new adventurer in town, and as far as top-down action RPGs go, he’s posing some serious competition. That new adventurer is Elliot, the star of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. And yes, if you’ve got love for games such as The Legend of Zelda or Alundra, you should probably consider it a must-have.

At the start of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, Elliot is simply an adventurer who’s made a bit of a name for himself due to his bravery and diligence. That leads to the king of the kingdom in which he resides to call upon his services, however, having heard worrying rumours about some ruins nearby. Needless to say, Elliot jumps at the chance to help, though soon finds himself caught up in a fight to save the kingdom itself.

You see, the big discovery here is that in those ruins is a doorway to another time. And one of the king’s most trusted men has gone power-hungry, wishing to use it for his personal gain. Now you’ve got to stop him before he can meddle with time and ruin everything you’ve come to love. Thankfully, while you’ve got your work cut our for you, you’ve got access to a range of weapons and abilities, and even better, lots of friends for support.

Perhaps your most important friend in The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is Faie, a fairy you meet a little while into your journey. She may be small, but she can aid you in a variety of ways that make her very useful indeed. Aside from being able to move her with the right stick, allowing you to get her to attack enemies on your behalf, throughout the course of your travels you can find strange buildings that allow her to acquire new spells. These can then be used to aid you in combat, exploration and puzzle solving.

The first spell you learn, Fire, for example, can be used to set enemies ablaze, as well as light certain objects and thaw out Elliot should he get frozen. And later on you’ll acquire other spells, such as one that enables you to warp to Faie’s position, allowing you to cover large gaps and pass through certain forcefields. Faie is also there to help you should you fall in battle, willing to revive you if you’re agreeable to giving her some shinies (Tul) for her trouble. You can’t rely on this too much, though, as the cost increases each time you do so until you rest at a checkpoint.

In any case, Elliot has plenty of tools at his disposal with which to defend himself, and using them appropriately is the key to success. While he starts with just a sword, over time he’ll gain access to a spear, a hammer, a sickle and chain, and numerous ranged weapons including a bow, bombs and a boomerang. Some of these can be used out in the open world to aid your traversal, too, with the bomb, for example, able to blow up boulders locking your path, and destroy cracked walls, revealing caves for you to enter.

Each weapon has a charged attack for you to make use of in addition to a standard attack, and while the combat is basic it does get a bit more involved over time, with you even able to eventually perform parries with your shield should you get the timing right. You’re rewarded for paying attention and successfully eradicating enemies without taking a hit yourself, too, with additional Tul being dropped as your combo increases.

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While there’s no levelling up here to allow you to grow stronger, you will find more powerful versions of the weapons available to you should you explore diligently. You can somewhat customise the stats and properties of these as well, using something called Magicite. You’ll acquire Magicite throughout your adventure from chests and suchlike, but you’ll mostly be creating it yourself by using Magicite fragments with a certain vendor. These pieces of Magicite, providing bonuses such as increased critical strike chance and more unusual perks with some weapons such as a chance to hit twice, can be equipped in your Magicite Box, and its capacity can be increased over time to allow you to make use of more of them.

Other upgrades are available for Elliot, too, though you’ll generally have to explore the world and complete trials to acquire them. It’s worth it, though, and taking time out from the story to simply explore is one of the highlights of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. Health upgrades, additional equipment slots and whole lot more can be yours if you’re willing to put the effort in.

Playing The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is truly a delight from the outset, thanks to its heart-warming characters and moreish old-school action RPG gameplay. What’s more, the time travelling twist here means that there are four ages to explore, each with its own twist on the map of the land and assortment of characters to meet. They might have optional quests for you, too. And thanks to a nifty fast-travel system that allows you to warp to any rest point you’ve previously activated, no matter what period of time it’s in, you’ll likely try to tackle as many of these optional quests as you can.

There’s not really much to dislike about The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales if you’re an action RPG fan, and most of the issues you might have can be easily resolved. If you find Faie’s ramblings too annoying as you explore, for example, you’ll find a setting in the game’s options menu to reduce the frequency at which she chimes in. The same goes for the menu which you use to change your current magic spell; head into the game’s options and you can change it so that you just have to tap a button to cycle through them instead.

So, while you might encounter the odd annoyance in The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, they’re few and far between, making this a very enjoyable adventure on the whole. It helps that it has a fantastic soundtrack and wonderful visuals too, the latter due to it being presented in Square Enix’s iconic HD-2D visual style. If you like the idea of travelling through time to save the world, battling plenty of monsters and conquering dungeons often filled with puzzles as you go, consider The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales an essential purchase.