The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is the kind of review story that looks simple from a distance and gets stranger the closer you stand to it. OpenCritic has it sitting at an 80 Top Critic Average, with 81 percent of critics recommending it, which sounds like a clean win for Claytech Works and Square Enix. Then you read the actual reviews and the neat number starts to wobble.
Some critics are treating it as the strongest proof yet that HD-2D can work outside turn-based RPGs. Others are hearing a fairy talk too much, seeing time travel do too little, and wondering why a game this handsome can feel so borrowed. The spread tells the story better than the average: IGN gave it an 8/10, PC Gamer landed at 76/100, Game Informer gave it 7.3/10, GameSpot went 7/10, Nintendo Life scored it 8/10, Hardcore Gamer went 4.5/5, DualShockers went 9/10, and The Jimquisition dropped to 5/10.
That is not a disaster. It is more interesting than that. The Adventures of Elliot is a good game that makes reviewers argue over what kind of good game it is.
The Adventures of Elliot review scores in brief
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales was released on June 18, 2026 for Nintendo Switch 2, PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5. OpenCritic lists Claytech Works and Square Enix as the creators, and the premise is plain enough: Elliot travels across eras with a fairy companion named Faie, cutting through a time-spanning action adventure built in Square Enix's HD-2D style.
The elevator pitch is obvious, and reviewers are not pretending otherwise. Several reviews bring up The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past within the first few paragraphs. Some also mention Ys, Chrono Trigger, and older 16-bit action RPGs. The question is not whether The Adventures of Elliot borrows from great games. It does. The question is whether it turns that inheritance into something with enough shape of its own.
OpenCritic's review page gives a useful snapshot of the split. IGN's blurb says The Adventures of Elliot "isn't without blemishes, but it's still a great action-adventure game" and calls out the HD-2D art style as one of the reasons it works. PC Gamer's verdict is quieter: "Belief in brevity helps an infectious passion shine through well-worn locales and plotting." Game Informer is less convinced, saying it "doesn't make full use of its time-travel potential," while GameSpot calls it "a surprisingly strong first attempt at reaching into this genre from a studio not known for it."
That is the whole critical argument in miniature. Craft, charm, and flow on one side. Familiar structure, shallow time travel, and noisy companionship on the other.
Critics agree the HD-2D action experiment works
The least controversial part of The Adventures of Elliot is how it looks. IGN's review opens with the idea that the best pixel art of the 1990s still holds up better than many early 3D games, then frames Elliot as Square Enix asking, "What if Square made A Link to the Past?" The reviewer calls the answer "an adventure I never knew I wanted," praising its story, build customization, and world.
Nintendo Life makes a similar argument from a slightly different angle. Its review says Square Enix's HD-2D style has worked across Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest remakes, and Live A Live, then notes that Elliot is the first HD-2D game with real-time action combat. The verdict there is clear: "It works surprisingly well," with Nintendo Life comparing the feel to a mix of A Link to the Past and Ys Origin.
That matters because The Adventures of Elliot could easily have felt like a visual experiment with a game attached. Instead, most critics seem to agree that the action combat carries its weight. PC Gamer describes a top-down adventure with a "healthy smattering of Zelda," a bit of Ys, and Square Enix's HD-2D style "looking the best it ever has." The reviewer is less sold on some of the plotting, but the physical act of moving through the world is not the problem.
The praise keeps circling back to tactile things: sword swings, tools, traversal, dungeon puzzles, environmental secrets, and the way Faie's abilities can bend the rules when they are not interrupting the flow. PC Gamer says Faie can create moments that make the player feel like a genius cheating the system. TheGamer points to the four-era world structure as one of the game's biggest strengths, arguing that the same land redrawn across time feels larger and more lived-in than its actual footprint.
There is a nice lesson there. A game can be derivative in outline and still feel alive in the hand. Critics are not giving The Adventures of Elliot points for novelty alone. They are giving it points because the minute-to-minute play has enough snap to make the familiar shape worth revisiting.
The fairy is a problem, depending on your tolerance
Faie may be the most repeated complaint across the reviews, and it is almost funny how specific the frustration gets. IGN calls her "a bit chatty" and says she can fall into the old companion habit of giving puzzle answers too soon. PC Gamer is blunter. Its review says, "And boy does she talk," then describes her as a fairy who comments on fights, items, chests, and simple puzzles so often that lowering her chatter in the settings becomes a sanity-preserving move.
TheGamer is harsher still, calling her "a character that seems to exist to be the enemy to my enjoyment." OpenCritic's excerpt from TheGamer ends with a recommendation that players turn the volume down once they meet "a certain should-be-mute fairy." The Jimquisition's 5/10 review goes straight for the audio direction, calling the game enjoyable but saddled with "some of the worst audio direction in videogame history."
That is not a small note. Companion characters shape the texture of an adventure game. They can make lonely spaces warmer, but they can also sand down the pleasure of figuring something out yourself. Elliot sounds like it lands on both sides depending on the reviewer. Faie is useful mechanically, especially when her abilities open up puzzle and combat routes. As a voice in your ear, she seems to be the thing most likely to turn a good session sour.
It is also why the score spread makes sense. If you love the combat, the look, and the structure, Faie may be a manageable irritation. If you come to this kind of game for quiet exploration, the same design choice can become a constant tax.
The time travel hook is where reviewers split hardest
Time travel is a dangerous promise. Once a game says its world spans a millennium, players start expecting cause and effect, changed geography, old choices echoing forward, and places that feel transformed by history. The Adventures of Elliot gestures toward all of that, but critics disagree on how much it pays off.
Nintendo Life is among the kinder reads. Its review says Elliot's actions in the past snowball across the eras and give the story a more personable angle, especially by the true ending. TheGamer also likes the structure, saying the four-era version of the same world creates a clever design economy: one environment does the work of four, and the land feels more lived-in because of it.
IGN and Game Informer are more skeptical. IGN says the time travel "never quite lives up to its promise," pointing out that locations change in some ways but often keep the same trees, shrubs, enemy types, and settlement logic across eras. Game Informer makes almost the same complaint. It says the main town and its people shift, but enemies do not vary much, the overworld does not change enough, and Elliot often revisits fields, caves, and dungeons he has already seen further down the timeline.
That divergence is the heart of the reception. Some critics see economical design that gives a compact world texture. Others see reused space that undersells the premise. Both can be true. A small team, or even a large publisher working within a focused scope, can make repetition feel meaningful when the context changes enough. If the context does not change enough for you, the clever economy starts to look like padding.
Why the 80 average feels honest
The easy version of this post would be: critics like the pretty HD-2D Zelda-like but complain about a loud fairy. That is true, but it misses why The Adventures of Elliot is worth watching.
The more useful read is that reviewers are responding to a game with strong fundamentals and uneven ambitions. The combat works. The art works. The world is pleasant to move through. The story seems better when it stays close to character and weaker when it leans on the grand promise of time travel. The companion design gives the game one of its most distinctive mechanics and one of its most common annoyances.
That explains the OpenCritic 80 better than any single quote. This is not a universally adored breakthrough, and it is not an overhyped disappointment. It is a sturdy, sometimes lovely action adventure that takes a very visible swing at turning HD-2D into something faster and more physical. The swing connects often enough to matter. It misses often enough that the complaints do not feel like nitpicks.
For Perthro players, this is exactly the kind of game worth journaling rather than just scoring and forgetting. A five-star rating can capture whether you liked it. A few sentences can capture the stranger part: whether Faie drove you mad, whether the repeated eras felt clever or cheap, whether HD-2D still has that old pull when the battles happen in real time.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales looks like a clean 80 on the scoreboard. The reviews underneath are messier, and better for it.