The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales Is Out Now and Team Asano Just Made Their Best Game Yet

Team Asano has been Square Enix's most reliable studio for years, churning out Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, Triangle Strategy, and a string of HD-2D hits that sell well and get genuinely loved. Today, June 18, 2026, they dropped something different: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, their first real-time action RPG, and it is already turning heads. The game is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam.

A New Direction for Team Asano

Producer Naofumi Matsushita and Director Shota Fukebaru said from the start that they wanted to make something accessible to players who had never touched a JRPG. The result is an action RPG that owes more to early Zelda and the Ys series than to Octopath's eight-character turn-based grid. Tomoya Asano, whose name defines the team, oversaw the project. The trademark HD-2D visual style is still front and center, mixing crisp pixel-art sprites with detailed 3D environments and dynamic lighting. If you've seen any Asano team game, you know what it looks like. The difference is that now you're swinging a sword in real time instead of waiting your turn.

The story follows a silent protagonist named Elliot and his companion Faie, who can travel through Doorways of Time to explore different eras of the same world. The demo released ahead of launch showed off the Age of Reconstruction, 250 years in the past, where survivors of some unnamed catastrophe live in a village called Littlehope. That concept of a world that changed dramatically over centuries, with the same geography wearing different faces in different eras, is exactly the kind of narrative structure Asano teams do well. You're not just running to the next dungeon. You're piecing together what happened between timelines.

The Combat Is the Wildcard

This is where the game either wins or loses players, and the early verdict leans positive. The combat takes clear inspiration from SNES-era Mana and the Ys series on Game Boy - fast, direct, with enemies that telegraph their patterns and punish button mashing. Fukebaru said in interviews that the team wanted that nostalgic SNES feel without making it feel dated. From what the demo showed and what early reviewers are saying, they mostly pulled it off. The dungeon in the demo, called Doorway Ruins, had platforming sections, environmental puzzles, and a two-phase boss fight against the Tag Guardians, a pair of enemies you had to read and adapt to. That is a lot to ask of a team that had never shipped an action game before.

The silent protagonist is a deliberate call. Matsushita said the team wanted players to project themselves onto Elliot rather than follow a defined character arc. That approach works in classic Zelda because the world does the talking. Here, Faie carries much of the dialogue burden, and from what players are reporting, she is written sharply. The game also carries save data from the prologue demo, so anyone who tried it on Steam already has a head start.

Review Scores and Community Reaction

The embargo lifted before today's launch, and the scores sit at roughly 79 percent on Metacritic and 82 percent on OpenCritic. That puts it solidly in the range of a good game without the universal praise that Octopath Traveler 2 earned. The gap is mostly about the combat. Some critics find the action satisfying and tight. Others say it lacks the depth of dedicated action RPG studios who have spent decades refining the genre. Neither reading is wrong. Team Asano is genuinely new at this, and the result feels like a very confident first attempt rather than a mastered craft.

Player reaction on social media has been stronger than the critic scores suggest. Multiple players in the first hours of release called it a serious game of the year contender, which is the kind of hyperbole that happens when a beloved team does something unexpected and it mostly works. Others drew comparisons to A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana, which are not small comparisons. The reaction is mostly positive with a smaller camp that wanted more combat complexity. Worth noting: the reaction pool is still thin this early after launch, so strong opinions in either direction come from a limited sample.

What It Means for Square Enix

Square Enix has had a rough stretch. Projects have been cancelled, leadership shuffled, and the company has leaned harder on its back catalog than it has in years. Team Asano has been the exception to that story, consistently shipping polished games with real budgets and strong sales. The Adventures of Elliot is a bet that their HD-2D brand can stretch beyond the turn-based comfort zone and pull in players who skipped the Octopath games. If it sells well, expect Square Enix to double down on this formula. If it underperforms, the studio will probably pivot back to what they know. The Metacritic score is not going to blow anyone away, but the genuine enthusiasm from players who are actually playing it right now suggests the game earns its price.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is available today on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC on Steam. A prologue demo is still live on Steam for anyone who wants to try before buying, with save data that carries over to the full game.