 No one talks very much about Secret of Evermore. For all the hype all the other adventure style games get, Secret of Evermore hardly has any hype at all, and there's a reason for that, it's just not a very good game. Wait a second, I can't be right, I don't give bad reviews, let me see the script. What's in the script? Is that in the script? Oh well, I guess it is. Yup, that's right, some of you are gonna hate me, but I would hate myself even more if I had to recommend this game to anyone. Now, Secret of Evermore got an unfairly bad rep because it wasn't Secret of Mana 2, but that's now why I don't like the game. At the time though, that's what everyone wanted and expected, but instead they got a game with a lot of the same elements. For example, it uses the same top-down view, the same battle system, and that layered ring menu system, but it falls short of being even an average game, let alone living up to the Secret of Mana standard. Now you might say, but wait, this is Squaresoft, it can't be bad. Oh actually, this was done by the North American Division of Squaresoft, and it ended up being the only game they would develop. Even at a fundamental level, the hit detection in Secret of Evermore is terrible. Every time you hit an enemy, you can expect to miss your very next attempt, take a hit, or get poisoned. Even if you and the enemy are standing in the exact same spot, it's frustrating for all the wrong reasons. There's a telling scene early on where your character and your dog are trying to navigate through an area, but these holes keep appearing at random. If you walk into one, you fall and reappear someplace further up the map. At one point your character says, this is getting old, no shit it's getting old. In this nonsense, they're going to frustrate you. It seems with every positive this game has, it's met with an equally annoying negative. Here's a few examples. The Alchemy system is actually pretty cool, it allows you to combine random stuff you find on the ground, like oil, wax, roots, or water, and you use them to create spells. However, even the simple task of collecting these items is irritating because it allows you to hit detection. They aren't ever visible on screen, your canine companion has to sniff them out, and sometimes it takes forever for your guy to pick up whatever he's sniffing. Come on, this fucking thing, pick it up. Pick it, I know it's there, the dog can smell it, the fucking pick it up. Jesus. Again, I like the idea, but it fails on a fundamental level. Another example is the soundtrack, which at times is great, but at other times it tries to go for an ambient feel and it just puts me to sleep. The sound effects are also a total mismatch for the kind of mood the soundtrack tries to give the game. A cartoonish squish sound when you finish off an enemy doesn't exactly fit. The story has some good ideas. I like the B-movie theme with the mad scientist type stuff. Here's what happens. This kid and his dog are accidentally teleported into a series of fantasy worlds created by some crazy ass inventor. You stumble around trying to figure out where you are and what the hell is going on. And really, there isn't really anything going on. That's particularly exciting or interesting, until you get to the future world anyway. As a whole, it just falls flat. It's just so freaking boring. I guess it might be more exciting if the game told its story with something other than a never ending series of mazes and fetch quests. You know the old RPG staple where you go into a village and they say, well, we'd love to help you, but help us find the obscure item first. If you love that, then you're in luck, because there's a lot of that in here. Also, I love the idea of having a main character with his dog. I'm a dog person, of course I love that. But I never really felt a connection between the two and the dog is just kind of there. So yeah, Secret of Evermore is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. It does have its moments, I guess. Some of the pixel art is really nice. And there are some laugh out loud moments. It's not a really bad game. It's just I can't recommend it. There's a reason it's not talked about very much, because it's not very good. You can find much better substance elsewhere on the Super Rainy S.