So overall, I enjoyed this game quite a bit, and I think that if this DOES turn into a series, then they are off to a great start. That being said, it wasn't without its faults or things I just found a bit... strange, but I'll go over my positives with it first.

POSITIVES

Combat - The combat is genuinely lot of fun. I think they did a great job with giving the player a variety of weapons to mess around with, and combining them with the various magicite, you can really build Elliot to be a powerhouse (Bombs are insanely OP, btw. Putting down 3 big bombs with fast fireworks and delayed explosion was enough to kill numerous bosses in a matter of seconds). So yeah, big check on the combat, because it FELT good, and I never felt like any of the weapons were bad. I often found myself swapping them around just to mess with the new effects.

Exploration - This started off really strong at first, so we'll see this topic come back up in a bit, but overall, I really did enjoy exploring this world. Whenever I got a new ability, I was immediately going back to every single place I had been previously to use it to find new weapons or magicite upgrades, so very much enjoyed that.

Music - Just good all around, not much to say here, but definitely a positive

Art - I'm actually leaning towards positive with this, and that's coming from someone who is kind of "over" the whole HD 2D thing. Would I have preferred a pure 2D game with a sprite based world? Yeah, definitely, but I can't say that this world didn't look good, either. Even something as simple as having well animated voxel grass doesn't go unnoticed, and out of all of the HD 2D games Square Enix has been pumping out lately, I think they really hit the mark with Elliot.

Core Gameplay Loop - Enjoyable, but it did become a bit predictable as well. That being said, I never found myself to be bored when playing, which I think is a huge benefit. The Cape was also a lot of fun, but kind of made me question its placement, due to the fact that I got it right away and was able to skip SO many "puzzles" in the dungeons. This isn't necessarily bad, just an odd choice, I think.

Negatives / Oddities

So, take it with a grain of salt when I say "negative" because yeah while I think that means there is room for improvement, it also doesn't mean I hated any of this stuff either.

The Map - This is basically tied to "Exploration" above. I think the idea of jumping between timelines is great, but the map REALLY could have benefitted from some big changes. I mean we're talking a game that spans over 1000 years and in all that time, the changes to the overworld are extremely minimal. I'd LOVE to have seen something more akin to Chrono Trigger here, or hell, even The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. I think that they just really missed the mark with this one, so exploring each new era just wasn't as fun as it could have been when you realize it's pretty much all the same, sans the main town. They absolutely needed some bigger changes across regions to keep things fresh here.

Enemy Variety - Kind of goes without saying, but you quickly encounter just about every single enemy type in the game VERY quickly, and then it's just a matter of recycling them for the rest of the game, with them getting stronger the further back in time you go (but since you're ALSO getting stronger, it's pretty negligible). This isn't the worst thing ever, and if you come from playing Zelda games, you're probably used to hackin' up the same enemies the whole game anyway, but for some reason it just felt so much more... noticeable here?

Faie - I don't find myself outright saying I "hate" characters in a game all that often, but wow, this was certainly a choice. I know I'm not treading any new ground here, but I still want to say my piece regardless. First and foremost, "helper" characters don't really bother me. I've never been on the Navi hate train (and if I'm being honest, I've always thought that was way overblown. Go play OoT again, she doesn't really interrupt you all that much, talking with her is pretty optional, but in a game from its era, it makes sense why she exists), BUT... I take issue with a character that absolutely never stops talking, AND has a voice that is grating. Walking by a bombable wall only for her to tell me about it time and time again is just bad. I'm glad that halfway through my playthrough, the update came out so I could turn her voice off entirely. Honestly, I'd have been totally okay with the Princess being the guide the whole game. I actually didn't mind when she spoke, but when she gets swapped over to Faie, I found myself getting quite annoyed with her ever constant talking.

Story - I... Don't know if this really belongs in "Negatives" but more or less considering it a bit of an oddity. Like It was definitely extremely predictable up to a point, and did have a couple of twists and turns, but then I feel like some stuff just kind of fell flat or wasn't very fulfilling, which brings me to some just general opinions I had at the end of the game

Weird General Opinions That Probably Only Bother Me?

Ikarus & Hildebrandt - I felt like these characters had a really abrupt ending that felt really incomplete. Ikarus you just never get to talk to again. After he freezes Mao, he eventually returns home and is bedridden leaving the player unable to talk to him for the rest of the game. It felt inconclusive. Same goes for Hildebrandt. This guy was so smarmy and CLEARLY evil from his first introduction, but I feel like he never really got any sort of comeuppance? NPCs around town say he made it back safely, but I absolutely could not find him again after the Northern Tower. I searched everywhere, so maybe he wasn't meant to be found, but he does show up in the ending credits. I dunno, I just feel like there should have been more here. Yeah we know that the Age of Magic eventually falls, but Elliot doesn't get to payback Hildebrandt for his misdeeds, nor does he even MENTION them. I think Hildebrandt was arguably MORE evil than Kaifried, but basically "gets away with it."

Carter & Mao - Okay so, I liked these characters over all, and I recognize how much of a nitpick this is going to sound like, but I'm more or less just curious if ANYONE else felt this way but like... I dunno, I found it very strange how they just instantly start calling Elliot "Lawei" once they found out he's their son, and even weirder to me is that he just instantly starts calling them "Dad" and "Mom." Mainly because like... These are characters that all met at roughly the same age (Mao being the odd one out here of course, but... mentally the same age?) and they met Elliot AS Elliot. They know him as Elliot far longer than they had time with Lawei. When you meet Carter and he's like in his 40s now, he even calls Elliot "Elliot." From both of their points of view it hasn't been THAT long since they've seen each other since Elliot quite literally just saw him before time traveling, and as for Carter he's been in a coma for 20 years, but then he finds out that he's Lawei and starts immediately calling him "Son?" It's just so... weird haha. Again, I know this is such a stupid nitpick on my part, but it was for whatever reason, hard for me to suspend my disbelief with this one. Maybe it's because all the character profile pictures and the voices that go along with them BARELY change and seem to be around the same age as Elliot anyway, so it's just... Yeah, I dunno. Like, I like that he chooses to use both names to honor is parents, that's a nice touch, but it's just so weird how quickly they start calling him "Lawei" and he starts calling them "Mom and Dad."

The Ending(s) - Okay so I actually liked pretty much all the endings, BUT... Where I think they dropped the ball was the sudden focus on just the present day? I don't necessarily mean we need to have like people from different eras somehow helping out to fight Demise in the future (although, as I type it.... could have been neat?) but we got no real conclusion to ANY of those stories. Like, yeah you could argue that those stories "concluded with time" but I mean like, Elliot's PAGE in those stories. Outside of a couple of bits of lore books you can find in the Epilogue. I think during the Epilogue, it would have been nice to have Elliot venture to each location one last time either via player control, or through a cutscene, where he says his goodbyes to the main characters of those eras. Instead, we're just told the Myu closed the portals and whoops that's it! It made the ending feel a bit rushed because of it. Outside of that, I think multiple endings is... fine, but not always necessary either? Not 3 at least. 2 probably would have been find. Either Kill/Seal Mao as the bad ending, and then Kill Demise as the Good ending. Probably a nitpick though.

Time Travel is Tricky and Always Feels Weird in Stories - I'm in no way AGAINST Time Travel in stories, and I think it can be fun overall, but it often leads to situation where it's way to easy to overthink things. In the story we're given, we're shown that things both are set in stone and bound to happen no matter what but ALSO that things can change? For instance, Mao was always frozen in the northern Temple, so Kaifried could steal the sword. She's frozen when you start the game, and then we play through and we watch her get frozen. This is a fixed point in time that happens no matter what. So on the one hand you might think "well things are just playing out as they should, it was bound to happen" but then you have the Carter situation where he initially was dead, tombstone and all, but then is able to be saved for... whatever reason. Mao also makes this EXTREMELY convoluted and complicated. For instance, the moment that we found out that Mao is the one who goes berserk (let's say.... When Elliot nurses her back to life in the Age of Reconstruction), why would we let her stew for hundreds of years until the Age of Safekeeping? Why not track her down in the age we SAW HER RUN IN and try to help her? Or better yet, go all the way back to the age of Magic and explain everything to her still living father. "Hey Grandpa, oh right by the way, I'm your grandson, anyway, Mao, who is my mother by the way, is going to go through some shit later in life. I need you to either write her a note or tell or something that helps remind her when she is older that Lawei and Carter are just fine, no matter what anyone says or whatever you may believe" I dunno, literally anything. She quite literally exists in a point in time where she could have been warned or had a message delivered to her via like a time capsule or something, who knows. Point being, Time Travel Shennanigans ALWAYS have weird holes, and I think they sorta overcomplicated some of their choices here.

Beast Tribes & And Their Untold Story - The whole game, ESPECIALLY after getting the two bad endings where the voice keeps saying "save us all" I honestly expected to find out that the Beast Tribes WEREN'T evil, but were instead under some sort of hypnosis or whatever by Demise or magic or whatever and that if we saved everyone they too would be saved, but uh, I guess that never happened? Like we had these weird moments where we show sympathy to the Beast Tribes (Saving that Wolf from Hildebrandt for instance) or like when we see them clearly being experimented on (like maybe THIS could have been why they were against humans?) but nothing really comes of it. They just hate and want to kill humans because uh... reasons. We also have like lore manuscripts talking about the Beast Tribes and living amongst them etc., just.... again felt like they planned more and then nothing came of it.

Final Thoughts

Overall, like I said, I really did enjoy the game quite a lot, and if this DOES become a series, I think it's a damn good starting game. I'd love for another Adventure of Elliot game where they take what worked here and expand on it. It doesn't HAVE to be time travel either. The subtitle could be literally anything else "The Adventures of Elliot: Distant Lands" or whatever and have us leave this kingdom to go on a REAL actual adventure. Maybe find out what is beyond the Kingdom of Huther in another continent or whatever where there are different beast tribes, and more human settlements. / kingdoms Honestly, they could take this series in a lot of different directions, so I'd love to see it continue. Maybe lean a BIT more into Zelda territory and give us a couple of fun upgrades ala tools or abilities.

ANYWAY, those are (some) of my thoughts on this game. If you managed to read this, congrats, and if you just skimmed it, well, I don't blame you, it's huge!