The Adventures of Elliot Prologue Demo Impressions

Square Enix is sort of a field of candies today; you by no means know what you’re going to get from them. You can both get the most recent Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mana recreation, or Octopath Traveler from them, or get one thing fully new you by no means thought you’d be excited for. Such is the case of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. This recreation is, at first look, principally “HD-2D meets oldschool The Legend of Zelda,” which could be very excessive reward and delivers on that premise from the get-go.

The Adventures of Elliot has slightly little bit of what you’d count on from Nintendo’s legendary recreation sequence, with some trendy developments. It combines very good voice appearing, an ambient soundtrack that kicks itself into excessive gear throughout fight, and a lot extra to make a retro-styled recreation that feels very trendy. Below might be our impressions of the (admittedly) prolonged demo of the sport that launched just a few days in the past!

A New Square Enix Hero is Born

The Adventures of Elliot opens with a mysterious cutscene of magical earrings being bestowed upon somebody earlier than introducing us to a forged of characters. The king of Huther, often called Hichard, his daughter, the Princess Heuria, their scholar Euygene, and Kaifried, a personality who appears adamant to discover newly found ruins. Euygene suggests to the king to enlist the assistance of a lone adventurer who’s none apart from our hero of the story, Elliot.

While the story pretty rapidly dives into time journey and the reveal of the villain of the sport (which had been predictable but satisfying). The Adventures of Elliot really shines within the moment-to-moment character interactions and the little tales between. Elliott’s introduction, for instance, begins with him adventuring out to discover a comb on a seaside for some older villager that stopped by the orphanage, whom Elliott goes on common adventures to generate income for.

My favourite half was when Heuria was overhearing how Euygene was as soon as an adventurer and used a spear, and easily couldn’t think about him with the spear, not to mention being an adventurer like Elliot. The line supply throughout that cutscene made me burst out laughing; it was unbelievable. But I believe everybody will get pleasure from Elliot and Heuria’s interactions essentially the most. They play off one another very effectively, and a few interactions are simply merely lovable. Elliot is even invited to her chambers for one scene that positively might’ve gone on longer. But for the temporary time I performed within the demo, it positively by no means misplaced my curiosity and all the time amused me.

The Breathtaking World of The Adventures of Elliot

The Adventures of Elliot takes place within the fantastical world of Philabieldia. In the demo, you’ll get to discover two totally different ages of Philabieldia, each with their very own distinct seems to be, treasures, and enemies to combat. The recreation has a metroidvania-style strategy to exploration. Certain areas might be blocked off till sure unlocks are made. Such as utilizing bombs to destroy boulders blocking the best way, and even a problem dungeon that offers a fraction of a coronary heart piece for Elliot. I hope there are extra of those with extra rewards, as some coronary heart items can simply be present in regular dungeon chests.

Philabieldia is sort of the looker if you aren’t breaking pots, smashing crates, and slashing grass (sure, you learn that proper) for treasure. The age you begin the demo in is stuffed with lush greens and even a small desert phase, with the second age being extra snow-covered and drab. I really beloved getting misplaced in exploration, and even clicking on (however not petting) cats which might be simply randomly positioned within the recreation world. The world in The Adventures of Elliot is gorgeous and enjoyable to discover, simply as a lot as it’s to combat in it as effectively.

Simple, Methodical Combat

The fight in The Adventures of Elliot is, in a phrase, easy. Elliot has a single sword slash, a defend to make use of to dam enemy assaults, and even will get to make use of bombs, boomerangs, a bow, and a spear. Each weapon has its personal quirk. Obviously, the bow is efficient at lengthy vary, however a charged shot in shut quarters offers lots of harm. On the opposite hand, his signature sword is the best to make use of with decrease harm, however might be charged to deal a powerful, long-range slash. Elliot’s arsenal is tremendous enjoyable to mess around with, contemplating the number of enemies on provide.

In the demo, there have been slugs, bats, rats, flying eagles, machines, and beasts to take down. The customary slugs, bats, and machines had been merely simply fodder. But the flying eagles, rats, beasts, elemental beings, and later machines within the demo are fairly attention-grabbing. The rats, for instance, can burrow below the bottom and get the leap on you, whereas the basic beings can create both projectiles or area-of-effect assaults. The bosses aren’t any slouches both.

They are huge and hulking, with patterned assaults and actions. They additionally, in fact, take some time to take down and may introduce some cool assaults. For instance, a beast boss close to the top of the demo would summon these ice crystals that adopted you round and would have devastating claw assaults. All of which might be offset with the customization system and made extra rewarding with the no-hit chain system.

Customization and Avoiding Hits

To get the easier system out of the best way, The Adventures of Elliot, exterior of equipment (which just one was accessible in my playthrough), has a weapon augmentation system referred to as “Magicite”. Magicite are gems with factors that prohibit what number of you’ll be able to equip. These upgrades can vary from harm will increase to sure synergies. Such because the sword regenerating your stamina with every hit after utilizing your defend to dam assaults. But it’s made extra attention-grabbing by the way you purchase them.

Throughout the sport, you’ll earn magicite fragments that may be spent to earn a random magicite crystal. You can spend as much as 50 fragments to get 10 totally different crystals, with duplicates getting dissolved to refund magicite fragments. The greatest approach to farm these fragments is by actually not getting hit whereas taking down enemies.

The Adventures of Elliot actively rewards participant talent by making a system that progressively offers you higher drops from enemies. The extra of them you kill, whereas not getting hit, the upper your drops get, and it’s noticeable. When I used to be at 3 stars, I used to be raking in nearly an excessive amount of cash. It was positively greater than I might spend within the demo, however I do know it won’t be sufficient to purchase sure late-game gadgets within the full launch. I simply want I might check the drop charges for magicite from bosses, however I’m sadly getting older and all the time get hit as soon as, irrespective of how a lot I save scummed.

Music, UI, and Accessibility

To cap all of it off, The Adventures of Elliot is pristine from high to backside with just a few caveats. To begin, the UI for the sport within the menus could be very easy and straightforward to navigate. The UI when enjoying the sport can also be quite simple and clear. Nothing will get in the best way, aside from the fixed useful chatter from Heuria, which you’ll be able to decrease the frequency of, however not shut off fully.

The music can also be superb within the recreation, as to be anticipated from Square Enix and the HD-2D workforce. You can both have very ambient tracks that may invoke both nostalgic emotions or energetic vibes, or full-on rock and intense violin chords throughout boss encounters. Nothing feels misplaced, and it by no means misses a beat.

The recreation’s accessibility settings are additionally nonexistent. There aren’t any colorblind choices, textual content measurement modifications, or something to be discovered within the demo. But there are troublesome choices to check out. I performed on regular and had a reasonably simple expertise.

PC and Steam Deck

As for the efficiency of the sport, I’m operating The Adventures of Elliot on my PC with an RX6600, 16 gigabytes of DDR4 ram, and a Ryzen 5 5600G and an m.2 NVME SSD. The recreation ran on the highest settings above 80fps, reaching 120fps in dungeons at 1080p. The recreation is attractive and easy, however there are two issues that hassle me essentially the most concerning the expertise.

When enjoying the sport, you’ll be able to have these bizarre LOD switching moments when going upstairs in a home in Huther, the place the world masses in correctly, however slowly fades away compared. Also, when the sport panned from Huther to Elliot within the opening of the sport, all the world popped into place piece by piece in the course of the scene, which was very jarring. It didn’t occur once more afterwards, but it surely nonetheless made me increase my eyebrow. The efficiency on Valve’s Steam Deck can also be slightly scary. On the bottom settings at 720p and 67% display screen rendering, it struggles to hit 60fps anyplace within the recreation; it’s Deck Verified, however doesn’t really feel prefer it. Aside from this, I skilled no bugs or crashes of any form.

Closing Remarks on The Adventures of Elliot Demo

Despite a few of the technical points, the demo for The Adventures of Elliot was such a breath of recent air. I loved each single second I performed of it and can’t wait to dive into the complete recreation subsequent month. If you haven’t performed the demo but, you need to. It is free and accessible on all trendy platforms. Such as Steam, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2. You will even get to maintain your progress from the demo if you purchase the complete recreation!