The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales could find yourself the least of Sq. Enix’s HD-2D choices, however that speaks much less to this recreation’s high quality and extra to the excessive bar established by all these earlier tasks. Whereas the Octopath Traveler collection has given us a contemporary spin on old-school traditional JRPGs, the Dragon Quest remakes have splendidly returned us to bygone instances, and Triangle Technique has helped preserve the isometric spark alive, Elliot isn’t fairly the HD-2D action-RPG pinnacle that it may have been.
Naturally for a recreation with this considerably cumbersome title, The Adventures of Elliot stars—who else?—an adventurer named Elliot. Decked out in unmistakably Remaining Fantasy purple mage garb, Elliot is a likable, if pretty shallow, protagonist who spends his days serving to of us in want and tipping his hat like the trendy hero he’s.
Elliot begins off with little greater than a sword, a protect, and a dedication to the trigger. However quickly sufficient, you’ll unlock a spear, a bow, a boomerang, a hammer, and extra. A few hours into the roughly 25-hour story, a fairy named Faie joins up, and he or she ultimately features a slew of neat magic spells to complement Elliot’s arsenal. On the one hand, it’s a reasonably sturdy lineup of weapons and spells for a comparatively quick JRPG.
On the different hand, gamers acquire entry to most of this—in addition to most of the core parts of the weapon-tweaking ‘magicite’ system—pretty early on. Extra fascinating magicite parts, like a bomb-bouncing mechanic and ideal parrying, do meaningfully come into play in latter elements, and in the event you’re like me, you’ll spend a great deal of time tinkering together with your weapon builds to search out the candy spot for varied sorts of encounters. However a lot of the story may have handed you by earlier than you get so far, resulting in an ideal many pretty rote encounters within the early going.
This pacing wouldn’t be a lot of a problem if it weren’t for the truth that The Adventures of Elliot’s much-touted time journey factor results in 4 situations of the identical smallish overworld. And, whereas the artwork workforce does a noble job imbuing every of this quartet of time intervals with its personal aesthetic, don’t go in anticipating The Legend of Zelda: A Hyperlink to the Previous ranges of variations. Dungeons, ruins, and power-boosting shrines are at all times in the identical spots, with the identical layouts. There’s solely a lot you are able to do to show “that desert a part of the map” into one thing even remotely contemporary between time intervals, too; and the identical holds true for many different areas.
Neither is there a lot of a beating coronary heart to the handfuls of NPCs you’ll encounter. With treasured few exceptions, dialogue in The Adventures of Elliot is bland and surface-level fare. Townsfolk are broadly trite. Not less than the myriad collectible manuscripts are sometimes extra entertaining, if solely barely.
The sport’s story isn’t unhealthy, actually. It’s simply quite static, missing vitality up till the again quarter or so, at which level it all of a sudden shocked me with some extra high-octane moments and a genuinely stable finish stretch. I’ll at all times maintain that, in the event you’ve bought to decide on one or the opposite, it’s higher to exit with a bang than to start out off simply as strongly—so, hey. Not less than it closes on a excessive level.
Many of the fight you’ll encounter, even on the second-highest problem (Arduous), most likely received’t problem you overmuch. (I haven’t gone again and performed round with the very best degree but as a result of I didn’t need my playthrough to distinguish an excessive amount of from what most gamers will presumably expertise.) The harder bits are inclined to stem from a few of the aforementioned power-up shrines, which typically provide you with Shards of Life. Gather 4 of those, and also you get a bit extra max well being, however a few of the goals will job you with benefiting from your weaponry and Faie’s spells. It’s only a disgrace that the core story hardly ever compares.
I do wish to speak a bit extra about these spells, although, as a result of I like how Elliot handles this. As soon as Faie learns her first method, Ignite, you possibly can reliably rely on her as a further supply of damage-dealing in some fairly cool methods. On PlayStation 5, management of Faie is dealt with by way of the proper analog stick, and casting a spell entails hitting the L1 button.
Easy stuff, however what this quantities to in follow is an added dimension of fight as a result of for all you’ll be transferring and repositioning Elliot in opposition to packs of foes, you’ll at all times have that option to commit a few multitasking seconds to bringing in Faie to mess with monsters. This may purchase Elliot time to get to security, or weaken enemies for him to deal with with higher ease. If the sport supplied the next diploma of problem throughout the board, I’d love this all of the extra so.
The Adventures of Elliot encompasses a truthful variety of facet quests, however most are fetch-style and received’t immediate you to have interaction with the mechanics a lot. You’ll often be taught somewhat bit extra in regards to the quest-giver on this vogue. Sometimes, this triggers an fascinating cutscene. For essentially the most half, not a lot. It’s very like the majority of the principle story, which, as I’ve famous, solely will get extra intriguing towards the top; the realm of Philabieldia simply isn’t populated with very many memorable characters.
For all its faults, this is a Sq. Enix HD-2D recreation, and sure issues seem predestined on this regard. The artwork model is gorgeous, particularly the eye to element in environmental issues. Foliage is lush, ice sheets are shiny, and you may virtually really feel the warmth radiating off of that lava. Elliot is a really fairly recreation. It additionally sounds nice—high-tier soundtracks, very like beautiful visuals, are primarily assured for Staff Asano JRPGs. (As Faie features spells, she has somewhat minigame with them that unlocks songs for an in-game music participant, which is a pleasant contact!) I’m significantly impressed by the sheer versatility of the varied overworld spots’ varied era-based remixes, in addition to the moody and atmospheric tunes accompanying a number of dungeons.
Finally, I’m reminded of the unique Octopath Traveler, the inaugural HD-2D experiment, as I look again upon Elliot. I don’t assume this newest launch is kind of as sturdy as that first one, however it suffers from the identical largest challenge, which is repetition. Whereas the formulation of Octopath Traveler dragged on harshly for a lot of gamers with out providing the sorts of twists and climactic beats that its sequel launched to shake issues up, Elliot’s personal formulation—right here’s the overworld map, now right here it’s once more, and once more, and once more—is unquestionably going to put on some of us down.
My hope right here is that Sq. Enix will construct upon what is perhaps Elliot’s first foray to create a sturdier, and importantly, greater, sequel. If that doesn’t pan out, properly, hey. This isn’t a nasty recreation. It’s simply not what it should have been. The primary actual miss from Staff Asano? I’m undecided I’d go that far, however it’s a little bit of a misfire.
Disclaimer: Assessment code for the PlayStation 5 model supplied by Sq. Enix.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millenium Tales can be obtainable on PC, Change 2 and Xbox Sequence X|S.