| The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales | |||
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| :Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Explore Philabieldia as both Elliot and Faie in The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales! Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the demo, and more.
Everything We Know About The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Plot
Humanity survives in isolation within the Kingdom of Huther, a city protected by a magical Spell of Safekeeping, while the rest of the continent of Philabieldia is overrun by beast tribes and monsters. After the discovery of a mysterious ruin outside the kingdom’s walls, the adventurer Elliot is dispatched by the king—supported by Princess Heuria, whose magic sustains the protective spell—to investigate these ruins. Elliot, accompanied by Faie, a fairy visible only to him, explores the ruins and uncovers the Doorway of Time, which grants access to both the past and the present.
Following the activation of the Doorway, Elliot and Faie embark on a journey that spans centuries, as they traverse Philabieldia and uncover layers of its thousand-year history. As they do so, the intertwined fates of Elliot and Faie reveal deeper truths about the continent’s origins and the kingdom’s past.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Gameplay
The game operates as a top-down action-RPG inspired by classic titles like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Combat here happens in real time. Players equip one of seven weapon types, each with different movesets and upgrade potential through collectible crystals. Encounters often feature multiple enemies, and this requires players to observe attack patterns and respond appropriately, especially on higher difficulty settings where poor positioning can result in substantial damage from grouped foes.
The gameplay also incorporates Elliot’s fairy companion, Faie, who has her own active abilities, such as a teleport mechanic. Control of Faie can be handled by AI, the main player, or a second player in co-op.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Release Date
Releases Sometime in 2026; Demo Out Now!
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales was recently revealed during the July 2025 Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, with a release window of 2026. We'll keep you updated with any new information about the game's release, so be sure to check back!
In the meantime, you can check out the game's demo, which released as soon as the said Direct ended!
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The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Review (Demo)
Zelda Meets Octopath Traveler
"The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales" is a bit of a mouthful, and it’s not exactly setting the world on fire as a title. It steers clear of "Project Triangle Strategy" levels of literalism, but it definitely leans into that "Legend of Zelda"-esque naming style, which would probably hint you as to the game’s inspirations.
Right before Octopath Traveler 0, yesterday's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase featured this game as its penultimate announcement. It wasn't the show's biggest reveal, but it certainly made enough of a mark to keep me thinking about it hours later. I admired the confident way Square Enix showed it, assured and bold enough to present its gameplay to the entire world with a demo available right after the event.
Of course, that’s all surface-level talk for now. The truth is that we’ve only been handed a sliver of what Elliot’s world holds, and it’s hard not to start connecting mental dots, filling in gaps with possibilities the way gamers tend to do when a reveal leaves more to the imagination than to the eye. From what’s shown in the demo, Elliot seems to walk that fine line between mechanics we’ve seen before and something that’s overly ambitious, though I’m not here to hand out grand declarations. Though details are sparse, the little we’ve seen hints at something that knows what it wants to be.
Echoes of a Millennium
For a demo that bills itself as a showcase of the game’s "exploration and battle features," The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales doesn’t linger too long on its story. In fact, it only gives you enough to go by. Much like Claytechworks’ approach with Bravely Default II in 2020, this is a sampler, an amuse-bouche before the main course, designed to tease the edges of something far bigger. Clocking in at about an hour if you’re brisk, though my own obsessive spelunking pushed it to five, the demo keeps narrative reveals to a minimum. You’ve an opening scene to set the tone, a sprinkling of context here and there, and a final morsel once the dungeon wraps. The curtain is mostly closed for now, and Square Enix even reminds you upfront that the point of this is to poke at its systems.
What we do know is this: The Adventures of Elliot is set against the backdrop of a continent steeped in a thousand-year history, with kingdoms, myths, and tales layered like sediment. Humanity survives in isolation within the Kingdom of Huther, a city protected by a magical Spell of Safekeeping, while the rest of the continent of Philabieldia is overrun by beast tribes and monsters. Elliot, our titular protagonist, and Faie, his fairy companion, find themselves entangled in something bigger than a simple journey. It’s skeletal in detail, but you can feel the story pulling against its restraints, waiting to breathe.
Their path in the demo leads them to the Doorway of Time, and this is where things get interesting. Time travel is a loaded gun in RPG design. It can fire blanks or reshape the entire experience, and seeing it teased here had me scrambling through my mental catalog. Could this play out like Chrono Trigger, where hopping across eras is baked into its story and mechanics? Imagine resolving a side quest in the past and watching the ripple effects unfold in the present. Or maybe it’ll take cues from Radiant Historia, which gives us branching timelines to jump between and puzzles that hinge on cause-and-effect. Will it pull a Bravely Default and loop its story back on itself? Though I suspect no one—myself included—wants to relive that particular structure.
Regardless of the template, the idea of layering exploration across centuries is exciting on paper. It raises questions about the game’s scope. How expansive is this world if its story spans a millennium? Will time travel reshape the overworld in meaningful ways? Whatever the answer, my expectations are high, not solely because of the premise, but because this is Team Asano we’re talking about. These are the folks who gave us Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, and Triangle Strategy, all games with stories that aren’t afraid to swing big. For now, though, all we have is a door, literally and figuratively, and a handful of questions that make the wait to its 2026 launch a little more unbearable.
Following in the Footsteps of Link
Gameplay takes center stage in this demo, and while the story may be holding its cards close to its chest, the mechanics have no such restraint. Square Enix wasn’t joking when they said exploration and combat were the focus here. Right from the first few minutes, you’re dropped into a hub town that’s small but lively enough to feel like a proper staging area before venturing out into the wider world.
From there, the demo unfolds into a generous expanse filled with winding paths and hidden nooks that tempt you to stray off the main route. It actually reminds me a lot of The Legend of Zelda—not the newer 3D ones, but more so the top-down classics such as A Link to the Past. Here, you're constantly rewarded for poking around and stumbling upon challenge rooms that reward you handsomely if you manage to clear it.
Elliot himself handles with a simplicity that belies the variety of options at your disposal. You can equip two weapons at a time, block attacks with a wooden shield, and rely on Faie for extra utility. Controlling her with the right stick opens up interesting possibilities for positioning and puzzles—more on that later—but the core of the combat is all Elliot. His many weapons encourage various playstyles. The basic sword is quick and straightforward, the bow covers ranged options (albeit with an aiming system that could use a reticle), and then there are the bombs and the scythe chain. Bombs scratch that nostalgic Zelda itch for cracking walls or knocking down shielded enemies, while the scythe chain is used to clear mobs in a circular sweep or yank enemies into melee range after a charged strike.
There’s a layer of strategy here that starts to emerge once you mix in Magicites, equippable upgrades that tweak your weapons’ properties, like increasing the reach of your sword attacks or the AoE of your bombs.
Don’t let the early encounters fool you into thinking this is all button-mashing, though. Sure, the first few fights are forgiving, but later on, enemy types force you to rethink your spacing and timing, especially when hazards enter the mix. Bosses bring some spectacle into the equation too. Nothing brutal, but they’re enough to make you learn patterns instead of face-tanking your way through. However, the final boss of the demo took me a couple of tries, which I appreciated; it’s always nice when a game tests your understanding of its systems before sending you off with a cliffhanger.
If you're struggling to take down a boss with your current health, Faie can bail you out and give you a retry from the Game Over screen. It'll cost you 100 Tul, the in-game currency, but if you've already grinded your way to the final boss, you've probably got well over a grand of those stashed away anyway.
I will say, though, that my main beef with the combat is aiming. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone in for a ranged attack, whether it’s a bow shot or a charged sword/scythe chain, only to miss completely because I apparently wasn’t facing the right way. It’d be super helpful if there was some kind of directional indicator for Elliot, maybe an arrow or something right below his sprite.
The camera can also be a bit of a pain. Since it’s fixed, it’s tough to tell what’s hiding behind cliffs or other obstacles. It doesn’t happen often, but it makes combat against random mobs harder than it needs to be when you can’t see what’s coming.
It’s Dangerous to Go Alone, Take Faie
Combat aside, exploration here feels just as integral. Even in this short demo, which barely scratches the surface of what the full game is likely hiding, it’s clear that there’s more to it than meets the eye. Even the hub town has branching paths and secrets to uncover. It isn’t labyrinthine, but there’s just enough to make you double back.
That design philosophy carries through to the overworld areas. Each zone feels layered, almost like a puzzle unto itself, with shortcuts and clues that nudge you toward hidden caverns or challenge rooms. The level design reminded me of those moments in older top-down Zelda games where you spot a ledge you can’t reach yet and immediately file it away in your brain for later. That breadcrumbing of secrets is here in full force, and it scratches the same itch.
A big part of that is how much your toolkit grows the more you interact with the world. Elliot can jump and swing his weapons, sure, but it’s Faie who has the movement options tucked in her wings. Her two main traversal abilities are a short-range dash and a teleport, and you can use them in a variety of ways. The dash is speedy but requires some finesse to execute properly, while the teleport lets Elliot warp to Faie’s location, provided she’s been sent ahead. It’s a mechanic tailor-made for clever puzzle design. Some of these are fairly simple, but later ones demand your spatial awareness and quick reflexes. Faie can’t float up slopes or gain verticality beyond a certain point, so placing her carefully becomes part of the challenge.
The dungeon designs lean into this as well. Each one I explored felt distinct not just visually but also mechanically, with their own gimmicks and hazards. The puzzles make smart use of your toolkit without being too obtuse, and there’s a nice mix of combat and movement challenges scattered throughout. I especially liked how some rooms clearly existed just to mess with you, like a timed-platform section here, a seemingly empty chamber that suddenly floods with enemies there.
Outside of dungeons, you’ll also find more isolated challenge rooms, which are compact trials that test one specific skill or mechanic, similar to Breath of the Wild. These became some of my favorite parts of the demo. They’re short and snappy in that way that makes you want to replay them just to see if you can do it cleaner the second time around.
I Can’t Wait for 2026!
We’re just a few months shy of 2026, and the JRPG calendar already looks like a buffet with no shortage of heavy hitters on the way. New installments, remakes, spiritual successors—the genre is in no danger of slowing down. And yet, even with all that looming on the horizon, I keep circling back to The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. Maybe it’s the charm of Claytechworks stepping out with their first original IP after lending their talents to Bravely Default II. Maybe it’s just the fact that this demo plays like a developer flexing their knowledge with the genre.
Either way, we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg here. The demo gives us a slice of its exploration, a taste of combat, and a hook that promises something bigger and—dare I say—time-bending. You don’t need much more than those to get people like me excited for launch day.
And I haven’t even touched on the presentation. The HD-2D art style looks gorgeous, even on the Nintendo Switch 2’s LCD screen, and somehow manages to make familiar JRPG aesthetics look fresh. The soundtrack, too, is worth mentioning. I can’t say yet if it’ll hit the highs of Revo’s legendary work on Bravely Default or those Attack on Titan themes, but it’s already clear this OST knows when to swell, when to breathe, and when to simply set the tone.
We’ve only been given a taste here, but if this is what the appetizer looks like, I can’t wait to see how the full course plays out. If Claytechworks sticks the landing, this could be the start of something special, and I’m ready to see where that Doorway of Time leads.
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The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Product Information
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| Title | THE ADVENTURES OF ELLIOT: THE MILLENNIUM TALES |
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| Release Date | 2026 |
| Developer | Claytechworks Co. Ltd. |
| Publisher | SQUARE ENIX |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Genre | HD-2D, Action, Adventure, RPG |
| Number of Players | 1-2 Players |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E |
| Official Website | The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Official Website |
