The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales preview – Not just a Zelda clone

Let’s address and then throw the elephant out of the room first: yes, The Adventures of Elliot is heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda, right down to how the title is formatted. With Square Enix’s HD-2D art style, Elliot uses sword strikes, bombs, and arrows to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. He also comes equipped with a fairy companion – definitely not familiar – which enables Elliot to use techniques, the first of which resembles Zelda’s Pegasus Boots. Oh, the trailer also showcases a chain weapon that drags things toward you.

Yes, you can very easily draw comparisons to The Legend of Zelda, and it’s seemingly done very purposefully. In practice, however, they feel fairly different. While Zelda de-emphasizes combat in favor of puzzle solving, Elliot seems to put combat in the forefront, at least in its early hours. Elliot is fast straight out of the gate, able to hop over holes and foes while swinging his sword quickly to dispatch monsters. Your shield is just as fast, and pulling it up at the last moment when an enemy is attacking can leave them stunned and open to damage. It’s a more action-focused adventure overall.

Moving through the forests, caves, ruins, and mountainsides in Elliot feels slick and speedy. You’re traversing JRPG dungeon-like terrain and labyrinthine corridors, but because of the immediacy of a sword swing, you can glide straight through while hoovering up items and currency. It’s multiple times faster than JRPG with similar level layouts, and still much faster than Link can move in any 2D game, especially from the start.

It even has Shrine-inspired challenges, from quick fights to platforming challenges, and so on. Luckily the rewards for completing these are less grindy: a health increase instead of currency for one, or a rare item for your inventory. These challenges are over fast, and the rewards felt more worthwhile than other games that have imitated Shrines, making them essential stopping points on the way to the main destination.

The HD-2D artwork pops far more in person than when you’re watching an online trailer, too. On closer inspection you can see the subtle tiled, pixel-like textures on each surface and building, and at higher resolutions it’s vibrant. With the Nintendo Switch 2’s 4K output, the crisp artwork looks great, and that applies to both textures and character art.

If I’m to poke holes, I’ll say that the English voice acting present in the Debut Demo isn’t fantastic, though I’ve only heard a small portion between the demo and the trailer. I’m also left wondering if puzzles will become more interesting over time, or if the game will stick to action primarily. If it does stick to action, then I’m hopeful the unlockable weapons will make a tangible difference to the flow of combat.

That all remains to be seen, but from its early hours The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Debut Demo is incredibly promising, and I’m eager to see if Square Enix can stick the landing and make this game something special. It's not the only Square Enix game shown during Nintendo's July 2025 Partner Direct, though, and they can't all get equal treatment.