The Adventures of Elliot expands Square Enix's HD-2D into action-adventure

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is the first Square Enix HD-2D game that feels like a proof of concept instead of a familiar throwback. By pushing that modern-retro look into action-adventure territory, Square Enix is asking a bigger question than “does this art style still work?” It is asking whether HD-2D can carry a new kind of game, one that is not built around turn-based battles at all.

HD-2D gets a new job

Square Enix positions Elliot as a “brand-new action RPG” from Team Asano, the internal banner behind Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default. That matters because those games helped define HD-2D as a prestige style for classic-minded role-playing games, but Elliot uses the same visual language for something closer to top-down adventure design. IGN’s review summary calls it an exciting expansion of that aesthetic past its turn-based roots, and that is the right way to think about the release.

The pitch is straightforward and smart. Square Enix says the game lets you open new paths across an untamed continent while uncovering the world’s mysterious history, and that framing makes the shift away from old-school JRPG structure feel deliberate. This is not just Square Enix recycling a beloved look. It is Square Enix trying to turn HD-2D into a platform that can support multiple genres.

What world Elliot drops you into

The game is set in Philabieldia, a continent split by danger and history, with the Kingdom of Huther standing as humanity’s only bastion. Square Enix’s official materials describe that safe haven as protected by a magic barrier, the Spell of Safekeeping, while the rest of the continent is overrun by beast tribes. That setup gives the game a classic adventure premise: a single stronghold, a hostile wider world, and a mystery that stretches across millennia.

The story hook is bigger than the usual “save the kingdom” setup, but it still starts with a familiar request. Elliot, a charismatic adventurer, is drawn into a quest that starts at the king’s command and quickly opens into something much larger, involving time travel and a kingdom in peril. Scott White’s review makes clear that the game is most compelling when it leans into that larger shape, not when it pretends to be a simple errand.

Why Faie matters as much as Elliot

The strongest character work in the game comes from the relationship between Elliot and Faie, the fairy companion who travels with him. White calls out Faie’s chatty presence, puzzle hints, and personality as a major part of the appeal, and that tracks with what this kind of game needs: constant motion, a companion who keeps the world from feeling empty, and a voice that gives the adventure some texture between fights and exploration.

That partnership also helps explain why the game lands as more than just a nostalgia play. Classic top-down adventure games live or die on momentum, and Faie gives Elliot a rhythm that feels closer to a living road-trip duo than a silent hero dragging through dungeon rooms. The result is a world that feels animated even when the underlying mechanics do not always fully cash the check the premise writes.

Combat, customization, and the Zelda comparison

The comparisons to The Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana are not accidental. Review coverage and promotional copy keep circling back to classic top-down adventure structure because Elliot is clearly trying to inherit that lineage, with action combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving doing the work that menus and turn-based systems usually would in a Square Enix RPG. IGN’s summary calls it a top-down journey across a wide-open world woven across time and space, which is a clean description of why it feels closer to a Zelda-style adventure than to Octopath Traveler.

Build customization is another piece that gives the game real legs. White is notably positive about how the systems open up over time, and that flexibility helps the adventure become more absorbing over its roughly 20-hour runtime. This is the kind of detail that matters in an action RPG: if the combat and gear setup never evolve, the HD-2D sheen starts to do too much of the heavy lifting.

Where the concept does not quite land

The one part of Elliot that feels less fully realized is the time-travel hook. White describes it as underused, and the age-to-age environmental changes do not always feel dramatic enough to make the premise sing. That is a real miss, because the game is asking players to care about a world that spans millennia, but the visual and structural payoff for that scale does not always hit as hard as it should.

That shortfall does not sink the game, but it does show where Square Enix still has room to grow if this becomes a larger line. A time-travel adventure wants more than a few altered backdrops and a lore dump. It needs the world itself to feel transformed by the jump, and Elliot sounds like it only partly gets there.

What Square Enix is testing here

The launch details are as important as the design pitch. Square Enix released The Adventures of Elliot on June 18, 2026, for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC through Steam and Xbox on PC. The company also put out a free demo on all platforms, with save data carrying over into the full game, which is a smart move for a new genre experiment that needs players to feel the combat and movement before buying in.

The official product information also lists Claytechworks Co. Ltd. and Square Enix Team Asano as the developers, with a Teen rating. That matters because it places Elliot inside the same creative pipeline that made Square Enix comfortable enough with HD-2D to keep expanding it, but it also marks the first time the style has been handed to action-adventure instead of remaining tied to turn-based RPG structure.

Elliot works because it understands what fans actually want from HD-2D: not just pretty pixels, but a sense that the old-school frame still has room to surprise you. If Square Enix can turn this into a real action-adventure lane, Elliot will look less like a one-off experiment and more like the moment HD-2D stopped being a visual signature and became a platform.