Team Asano has yet again moved into a new genre for their HD-2D titles: this time, an action-adventure title. While the title doesn't seem to promise much, and the characters skew a bit too archetypal for my tastes, it's a competent adventure, and one that I hope gets a much-needed follow-up to expand on matters somewhat.

Millennium Tales is a magical time-hopping adventure, with our dashing hero, Elliot, traveling through time and exploring his homeland's five different eras to set right what an evil minister has driven towards ruin. I hate to naysay the entire ordeal, since the cast is never particularly offensive. Flat and a bit predictable, but there's nothing wrong with a boilerplate cast. Princess Heuria is your typical too-pure-for-this-Earth princess; Minister Kaifried has his malicious intentions written on his forehead; and our hero, Elliot, is a generous and adventurous soul who wishes to pay kindness forward. The Beast Tribes are swaths of faceless mooks you can mow down without thinking of The Implications™. You will never dread character interactions, but you will wish they did something to surprise you once in a while; Elliot's true depths are a bit backloaded.

On that note: while the English performances are positively superb, and no expense is spared in offering Millennium Tales a theatrical tone, the cast is rather chatty. Elliot is overseen by Heuria (and later Faie the fairy). Again, I wouldn't say their chatter is annoying. If anything, it's helpful to hear them warn you about caves you don't really need to worry about, especially since they tend to have puzzles you won't have the tools to solve. But you seldom encounter so much as a movable pillar that won't make Faie or Heuria insist you try to move it. There are even a few occasions where the game's message prompts reveal the solution to certain puzzles as you encounter them. Millennium Tales was drawing comparisons to other puzzle-based action RPGs in the lead-up to its release; consider yourself warned if that's the mentality you bring to the game.

And yet... Millennium Tales doesn't seem particularly interested in pursuing that path. Millennium Tales is cut from a similar cloth, sure, but its execution is all its own. For starters, while some weapons obviously are meant to help with environmental puzzles (bombs for blowing up giant rocks or cracked walls, a hammer for slamming giant pegs), most of their use is in the name of combat. Millennium Tales places far more emphasis on your moment-to-moment dealings with the beast tribes, particularly in how you dispatch them. There's a nifty mechanic where you can build up a combo by slaying enemies in sequence without taking a hit, which grants you improved drop rates (extra money and magicite). It's a fun mechanic, and losing your combo will motivate you to beat your personal best again and again.

While Faie has her own set of tools to aid traversal, they are also rather situational and mostly useful in combat. You can even get a second player to control Faie and help with swarms of enemies (or help by picking up spare tul enemies drop). It's fun enough, but again, you want some wrinkles to the formula. The good news is that it's there via the Magicite: crystals Elliot can equip that modify how each of his weapons works. Some have rather mundane effects (just increasing raw damage), others do more esoteric things like splitting the Spear's damage in exchange for granting it extra simultaneous thrusts, making your bombs bounce around when thrown, or giving your boomerang increased damage at the cost of making it deal damage to you upon its return. Magicite is mostly acquired randomly by exchanging magicite fragments with vendors in a gacha-esque system, with your odds of obtaining rarer magicite increasing once you've acquired enough of it. Later on, you can even specify which kind of magicite you want by weapon. But again, you do expect and hope for a bit more.

There is, at the very least, no shortage of stuff to do; players can look forward to countless caves and shrines, all rewarding an inquisitive mind and a bit of curiosity. Shrines offer myriad rewards, from health expansions to new powers for Faie, while delving into caves will almost always yield extra tul and magicite. There are even "Practice Sessions" you can undergo with Faie's magic to unlock in-game music. And, in a relief to us, 

Millennium Tales does not work on Chrono Trigger rules—you're not robbing yourself of later rewards in future eras by opening chests in the past. It's also encouraged that you explore as much as you can, since completing all of the side quests is the only way to attain the true ending. And with Millennium Tales clocking in at around 25 hours, it ends at just the right time.

We played the Switch 2 version of the game; while I had been told that the Switch 2 port suffered from some performance issues, I did not notice anything particularly awry during my playtime. Moreover, the game looks just as fine in handheld mode as it does in docked mode. The Switch 2's screen ghosting is nevertheless a factor, but I think it works in Millennium Tales' favor given the 3D texturing on the walls and trees. It's otherwise an HD-2D title; it's a feast for the eyes, looking great in pictures and better in motion. And the music is particularly great.

And that's Millennium Tales. It's a competent and extremely promising first outing. It doesn't overstay its welcome, a bit too chatty, feels great to play, but it needs just the tiniest kick in the pants. Action-adventure players will appreciate its fun, hack-and-slash approach (free of an odious Stamina bar!). Players looking for a more dedicated puzzle-based dungeon crawler will walk away mildly disappointed. But it's an overall fun time. It'll be a tragedy if it never gets a sequel. I want to see what Elliot can do with a bit of confidence under his belt.