The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review: "Expansive without being intimidating, varied without being overwhelming, and familiar without being tired"

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales might sound like a story about a cheeky young boy navigating life in the early 2000s, but in actual fact it's the name of a Square Enix RPG designed to tickle your nostalgia glands. The sprites could have been lifted straight out of something like Chrono Trigger or Illusion of Gaia, and the whole experience has very strong Good Old Days vibes. Be assured however that nostalgia is the decoration, not the whole cake.

While The Adventures of Elliot cuts a lot of fat away from modern gaming – there's no crafting, no RNG-driven gear, and no areas telling you you're not a high enough level to survive – it nonetheless benefits from advances made in the industry over the years. This is most immediately obvious in the visual representation of the world, described as "HD-2D visuals". What this means is plenty of deliciously crisp 1990s-style pixel art, subtly combined with more modern techniques and art tech. It all runs wonderfully smoothly, too.

Do the write thing

A story runs throughout the entire experience of course, and… look. I love this game, I really do, but the story and the way in which it's told is an Achilles heel big enough to challenge the most talented cobbler. But you know what? The writing isn't bad. Not at all. It's just so painfully adequate. The big picture is as familiar as you could possibly imagine – princess in peril, world threat, up to you to fix it, blah blah blah – and there's very little in the fine detail to spice things up.

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It's not sad, it's not funny, it' s not thought provoking. It just is. There are several twists, but only one that I didn't see coming hours ahead of time (though it is, admittedly, an interesting one). 99% of the time it's perfectly competent Original Flavor writing; nothing more, nothing less. There are some great lines to quote to people out of context though, my personal favorite being: "You don't seem at all surprised by my wife's ears".

As disappointed as I am with the writing (something I value highly), I have no other criticisms. Everything else makes up for this weakness, because The Adventures of Elliot is beautifully designed. The overworld is a great example of this. It's fundamentally open world and, in true classic RPG fashion, more and more of it slowly opens up as you unlock new items and abilities. You're never given compulsory tedious tasks so the developer can show off how far apart things are. Instead, you're gently encouraged to realize that exploration is to your benefit.

The game ordinarily only saves when you hit an 'adventuring guidepost', which also functions as a fast travel point. These things are (usually) reasonably placed, but also, that fast travel function is a good reason to poke around between objectives. You might not need to get up to the top of that mountain now, but you'll be grateful for the shortcut when you do. And who knows what you might find on the way?

You can't customize your gear. Well, you can, but perhaps not in the way that the industry may have taught you this is supposed to work. You'll find and unlock a variety of weapons on your adventure, and in effect, what you see is what you get.

When you get your hands on the hammer, for example, that's only ever going to go one way for everybody. No color coded rarity levels, no random attributes. It's just a comically large hammer that you can use to whack enemies with and (of course) drive poles into the ground. The bow is the bow, a bomb's a bomb.

However.

There are stronger versions of each of the weapons to be found, usually by poking your pixellated nose into a hidden corner or seeking out an optional boss. These are well worth seeking out, and – after a certain point – can be upgraded further with Magicite. This is the one area where randomness comes into play. Weapon-specific buffs can be found in chests, but you'll get hold of the majority of these by collecting the relevant currency (often from bosses, in large quantities), giving it to the Magicite vendor, and crossing your fingers as you watch Magicite buffs being spat out.

Elliot to pay

Something The Adventures of Elliot does well, despite the weak story, is create a sense of an evolving, well… adventure. For the first few hours, for example, the obligatory princess will communicate with you via a pair of magic earrings (yes) and provide free healing on a cooldown. After that, however, your chatty companion changes from the obligatory princess to the obligatory fairy.

This is a huge gameplay shift because, in addition to losing your free heals, you gain (over time) a small selection of magical abilities. This feeds into the customization aspect. Personally, I would usually use the chain and sickle for melee, and the bow for projectile attacks. When it came to bosses I would often use (once unlocked) the Copy magical ability, where your fairy companion Faie briefly clones you and copies your actions – including attacks.

Even the standard currency, Tul, is exploited in interesting ways. Yes of course you can get small amounts by smashing pots and cutting grass, but the introduction of Faie immediately changes how you think about it. While she can't (or, I personally suspect, won't) heal you, she can resurrect you on the spot as many times as you like. For a price, that is; a price that increases drastically with each subsequent resurrection until you reach the next adventuring guidepost, where the cost resets. Gee, thanks Faie, good to know you have my interests at heart there.

This makes you think about the fairytale cash differently. I need to stock up on healing potions and arrows, but am I confident that I won't need that Tul for an extra resurrection in the next dungeon? It could make all the difference. Then there's the Magicite vendor. The price to increase the Magicite limit on my weapons is pretty steep, but if I could stick that stun buff on my chain and sickle in addition to reducing the charge time for the special attack…

And the dungeons? Speaking as somebody who often trudges through RPG dungeons with the sullen reluctance of a teenager on a supermarket trip, I like these dungeons. My sense of direction in both games and real life is awful, but I never get lost or frustrated here. The dungeons are relatively small, yet still manage to send you through loops and make you think about where or how to progress. The bosses are pretty good too, relying on traditions of learning attack patterns without ever feeling unfair or overfamiliar (though I do kind of resent the fact that precisely two bosses – and absolutely nothing else in the entire game – make parrying compulsory).

Adventure capitalist

By putting in the time to explore, resulting in finding the best possible version and powerful Magicite bonuses. I ended up with a boss-melting bow that certainly helped make such encounters less painful. But the fact that this is possible is very much to the game's credit. A relatively minor but, I think, important point that I really appreciate is that most bosses are vulnerable to damage throughout the fight. A few have invulnerability phases, but generally speaking, you can work on carving chunks out of a boss's health bar at any time. More of this please, videogame industry!

I only now mention that the story has a time travel aspect, as it's only really leveraged in a meaningful (though still unoriginal) way once. It's worth mentioning though that the overworld is, barring some visual and structural differences, broadly the same across the four ages. This helps ensure that the experience never comes to a juddering halt because, if you're struggling to work out how to reach your next objective, you can switch to a version of the map you've revealed more of to find the path or cave shortcut that you need.

Getting the 'true' ending involves completing a fetch quest that spans the entire map – across all four ages – that was previously optional. Ordinarily, this kind of thing really annoys me; but as exploring the map is so enjoyable and beneficial, I was already about halfway there anyway, and the various fast travel points – combined with something that shows the location of each item you're looking for on the map – meant that it didn't take too long. That's The Adventures of Elliot all over, really; it lays challenges in front of you, but makes sure that you have a good time overcoming them.

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