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The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, early reviews

gamingJun 17, 202640885

Square Enix's HD-2D action-adventure The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales opened to generally positive early reviews, with Metacritic around 79 and OpenCritic at 82 across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch 2. Critics praise the Zelda-like combat, standout soundtrack, and a gripping final act when the game's time-travel lore and multiple endings coalesce, while several reviews fault repetitive overworld design and identical dungeons across ages. Review scores span roughly 7/10 to 9/10, including GamesRadar+ at 9/10, PC Gamer 76/100, IGN 8/10, and GameSpot 7/10, showing enthusiasm tempered by notes on unrealized potential. The reception matters because Team Asano's HD-2D style is proving viable outside turn-based RPGs, suggesting Square Enix may push this visual approach into mainstream action-adventure titles.

Rebekah Valentine
@duckvalentine.bsky.social

every review is just someone's opinion, man, but i have some questions for some of the reviewers who praised this game's story. did we play the same game?! kotaku.com/the-adventur...

1333h ago
Rebekah Valentine164

I am BEGGING RPGs, and video games more broadly, to learn to tell a more nuanced story than "one day everyone woke up and realized racism was bad, and then everything was fine forever, the end"

Dora B8

Can't believe his name is Elliot and the game is set in Philly(abieldia) A lot of Square Enix's recent games have felt very "by the numbers" to me when it comes to story and writing in a way that I would say skews very young if not for the fact that young folk have way meatier material to choose.

Fossilized Nerd (Jesse)4

dang, my fears from the demo are realized. Maybe they intended this game as more of an introduction to the genre for younger audiences, but that doesn't excuse the story being bad when my first real RPG was Paper Mario TTYD that had multiple deaths and very nuanced story bits lol

Jesse Norris4

It's a game with one seemingly bad person and everyone else is levels of the greatest/nicest person you've ever met.

Matt Sowinski3

Right?!?! Like I can't remember a single characters name. Everyone is exactly who you'd expect, with no exception.

woke stifler3

i thought it finally picked up and did some interesting things at the very very end but yeah not much of note before that

Nathan Savant2

I played the intro demo and nearly threw myself in front of a bus during the orphanage scene. It takes skill to be that saccharine and overwrought...

Hugh J. O'Donnell 🏳️‍🌈2

I played the demo and the sidequest with the hat broke me.

Kraehe2

I quit the demo after the first dungeon. I couldn't stand the dialogues any longer. And the gameplay wasn't fun enough to make up for them, which is sad. I hoped I would like it.

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