The Adventures of Elliot
Release Date: 18/06/2026
Platforms: PS5, NS2 XBOX & PC
Platform Played On: PS5
Hours Played: 30
Score: 8/10
The Adventures of Elliot is Square Enix's latest release, and while it is not as big or ambitious as some of their other titles, it finds real beauty in keeping things simple. This is a classic top-down Zelda-style action adventure built on their HD-2D pixel art style, and that look works wonderfully for this kind of game. From the grasslands to the lava-filled caves, everything looks stunning.
You play as Elliot, and alongside the fairy Faie, you travel through four different ages to save the land. That is about as much as I will say to keep things spoiler-free, but the story is fairly simple and nothing out of the ordinary.
The open world is not huge, but it is dense with collectibles, secrets, dungeons and other things worth hunting down, and you do not just get one version of the map. You get four. As mentioned, you travel back in time across four different ages, each one a slightly modified version of the world that you re-explore almost as if it were a new area.
This is where I have my biggest reservation. Some minor changes you make to past versions of the world do ripple forward into future ones (though not the other way around), which sets up what could have been some genuinely clever puzzles built around moving back and forth. Instead, the game only leans on this idea for a handful of mostly minor moments. The concept of exploring different versions of the world is cool on paper, but once you have fully cleared, say, the second age, it starts to feel repetitive. The collectibles and chests are unique to each age, and the dungeon layouts shift a little (a wall blocking your path in one age might be open in another), but for the most part these play like separate dungeons that feel the same and are never really connected.
To be fair, the game goes for a simple approach across the board, so it makes sense that they did not want to overcomplicate the time travel either. And even when the mechanics are simple, they tend to be well implemented and end up more satisfying than the hollow, overcomplicated systems you find in plenty of other games.
It is not a metroidvania, but it carries that flavor. Progressing the story does not hand you many new traversal abilities (that mostly comes from a few weapons and key items), so the metroidvania side instead comes through optional Fairy Powers that you earn by exploring. These let you solve puzzles and reach optional areas you could not get to before.
There are also very light RPG elements. Accessories grant passive abilities, and a system called Magnecite lets you slot stones into your weapons to boost stats and add effects. You earn these through a light gacha system, spending currency picked up from defeating enemies and clearing challenges at a merchant for a chance at better Magnecite. It is a nice touch, the kind of thing you drop by for a few spins every now and then, and it never feels abusive, especially since the more you use it, the better your odds of pulling the rarer stones. Combine that with the sheer number of weapons on offer, and you get a surprising amount of build customization.
Unlike a lot of games these days, Elliot does not try to be hard for the sake of it. It is a chill experience even on normal difficulty. If you skip some of the HP upgrades scattered around the map, you may die to a few bosses, but you can always spend in-game currency to revive as many times as you can afford (the cost does climb each time you do). The only places you are likely to hit a real wall are the True final boss and the hardest optional trials in the Temple of Trials, which is essentially the endgame boss rush.
On that note, the bosses are generally a lot of fun, with interesting mechanics that mix things up, and they look great too. The regular enemies are another story. You see most of them in the first few hours, and from there they get repetitive and a little unoriginal.
My one real gripe is the hand-holding. The simple, easy design already gives it a younger audience feel, and the constant guidance leans hard into that. Your fairy companion never stops talking and telling you what to do (if you thought Navi was bad, brace yourself). You can turn that off in the menus, but the map still throws icons at you for basically everything, which spoils a lot of the discovery. There were one or two optional puzzles that held up, but you rarely get that real sense of exploration because you always know what you are about to find. You can even set the main collectibles, the cats, to show up on the map.
All that aside, Elliot is a beautiful game that makes the most of its HD-2D pixel art and is an all-around good time if you are after something in the spirit of the classic Zelda games without the punishing difficulty. The catch is that the world does start to feel repetitive toward the end, and at roughly 25 to 30 hours for full completion, the 70 euro price can feel a little steep.
