Square Enix's The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a sprawling isometric action-RPG with enough side content to swallow your entire weekend. Whether you're planning a quick story run or gunning for every collectible, the range here is enormous. Anywhere from 20 hours to well over 100 is on the table, depending entirely on how you play.
How long does it take to beat The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales?
The short answer: 30 hours for a standard playthrough. That's the figure Director Shota Fukebara has put forward, and it lines up with a focused run that hits the main story while still picking up sidequests and shrines along the way. If you're the type who reads every line of dialogue and hunts down optional content naturally, 30 hours is a realistic target.
Skip cutscenes and treat side content as optional, and you can shave that down to around 20 hours. The game's dungeons are the biggest variable here. Some of them are genuinely tricky, and struggling through a tough one can add meaningful time to your session count.
Adventuring guidepost save screen
What's the time breakdown by playstyle?
The gap between a casual run and a completionist run is massive, so it's worth knowing exactly what you're signing up for before you start.
The jump from 30 to 90 hours reflects just how much optional content exists across the game's different ages. Optional activities, side quests, and minigames all sit outside the critical path, and the game doesn't pressure you to touch them. That's both a strength and a trap for players who want to see everything.
Side quest menu overview
How do you get the Platinum Trophy faster?
Here's something that surprises most players: the Platinum Trophy (or 1000G on Xbox) can be earned in around 25 hours, well under the 100-hour completionist estimate. The key is playing on Normal difficulty and using the game's save system smartly.
Before reaching each ending, save at an adventuring guidepost. From there, you can load that file to unlock alternate endings without replaying the entire game. This single trick removes the biggest time sink from a trophy run and frees up hours for collectible hunting.
What makes the completionist run take so long?
The 100-hour estimate comes from the sheer density of collectibles spread across the game's ages. The world is divided into distinct areas including the Age of Safekeeping, Age of Reconstruction, Age of Magic, and Age of Budding, each with their own maps, treasure chests, manuscripts, cats, and shrines to track down.
Treasure chests alone are split into three color categories: Blue, Red, and Green, each requiring separate hunting. Add manuscripts, shrine locations, and the full side quest list, and the hours stack up fast. The game also features New Game Plus, so players chasing absolute completion have a reason to go back for a second pass.
Is the time investment worth it?
For fans of action adventure games, the answer is almost certainly yes. The 30-hour standard run hits a sweet spot for the genre. It's long enough to feel substantial without demanding a month-long commitment. The optional content layered on top gives dedicated players something to work toward without forcing it on everyone else.
The trophy run at 25 hours is a genuinely efficient path for achievement hunters, especially with the save-scumming trick at the ending branches. And if 90 to 100 hours sounds daunting, the game's structure means you can dip in and out of deeper content at your own pace rather than tackling it all at once.
For more walkthroughs, tips, and strategies, the full strategy guides collection covers everything from Magicite builds to dungeon walkthroughs.