 That's right, I'm revisiting a game I reviewed all the way back in December of 2013, I guess I could have named this video is SNES Drunk's Secret of Evermore video worth watching today. And the answer is a definitive no, here's the deal with that video. At the time I made it, I'd only made positive review videos for games like Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, and the Lufia games, so I was getting comments asking me, hey, when are you actually gonna do a negative review of something? So like an idiot, I went totally overboard on the negativity with Secret of Evermore. But here's the thing, that video may suck, and I didn't totally know what I was doing yet, but I still don't think Secret of Evermore is that good of a game, however I do feel a little more equipped to explain why I feel that way now, unlike before. First let's talk about what Secret of Evermore actually is. It's an action RPG made by Squaresoft, and it's the first game made by the short-lived Western branch of Squaresoft. So yeah, this game was made in North America, and was never actually released in Japan. Where people might get confused about this one is how it's related to Secret of Mana. The answer is, it's not at all, it's a totally different entity altogether. It may share a lot of similarities, like in the title, in the controls, and in the ring menu system, just to name a few things, and it even shares some of its flaws, but Secret of Evermore is its own thing, and it's not part of the Mana series. I'll start out by talking about the strengths of Secret of Evermore, beginning with the story. You start in Podunk USA, where your character has just seen the Lost Adventures of Vex, a cult classic, before your character's faithful dog decides to chase a cat all the way to this old abandoned laboratory. You stumble into whatever this is, and your dog decides this is a perfect opportunity to start chewing on some wires. It causes both you and it to be warped somewhere. You're greeted by some old dude who helpfully guides you to a chamber that contains these robotic things that attack you, and thankfully there's a bazooka nearby that you can use to blow them to smithereens. You try and find your way out, but instead both you and your dog find yourselves in a spaceship? Turns out you were orbiting the Earth somehow, and now you've crash landed into a jungle, and your dog is now somehow a monster? What the heck is going on? I really like how the story is laid out here. There's plenty of intrigue right off the bat, so I can't help but be curious to find out what's really supposed to be happening. You explore and end up fighting these dinosaurs until eventually you wander into a village, which is apparently led by someone named FireEyes, who is this little girl, okay? She tells you that you're in a place called Evermore, a prehistoric island, and if you rescue the village alchemist, she will help you try and find your way back home, and so begins your adventure. You'll see right away that the dialogue is sharp and actually, you know, kind of sort of resembles how people actually talk. I also really like how fleshed out your character is. He's apparently obsessed with some cheesy monster movies, hey that makes two of us. You're referencing some scene or some line from a movie with a title like Mars Needs Lumberjacks? I really like that touch. Plus, I mean, you have a dog as your companion, you gotta love that. Another strength of Secret of Evermore is just the look, feel, and sound of this game. I've been doing this channel for over six years now and I've managed to play all sorts of adventure and role-playing games, including all the really weird and unique stuff like Energy Breaker, Chaos Seed, Emerald Dragon, Far East of Eden, but there is no video game period that has the same kind of energy, so to speak, as Secret of Evermore. The settings, the atmosphere, the music, which is the first soundtrack created by Jeremy Sol of Elder Scrolls fame, there's the dialogue, the alchemy system that you'll eventually learn, everything here is completely unique, yes, even apart from Secret of Mana. Secret of Evermore may borrow elements from that game, but this still manages to be its own thing entirely, in some ways it even improves on some of the flaws that Secret of Mana had, like incorporating real-time damage formulas that don't allow you to have damage stacked if you get stuck somewhere, so you're not absorbing hundreds of hit points of damage out of nowhere. Another thing that makes this game unique is the aforementioned alchemy system, Gone is any sort of MP that you have to manage, instead you manage a huge list of supplies combining items to create spells, for example the very first spell you get is Flash, and in order to use it you need one part wax and two parts oil, so for every one wax and two oil you have is the number of times that you can cast that spell. There are 34 total spells you can obtain usually by meeting and talking to people or by reading it in a book that you find, but you'll always need ingredients with each spell always requiring two things, whether it's gunpowder and grease for the nitro spell or root and vinegar for a cure spell. So how do you find all this stuff? Well it's just laying around on the ground and your dog sniffs it out for you, he can find stuff on his own, but one nice thing here is that by pressing the L or R buttons you can tell your dog to search for stuff, actually picking it up on the other hand, come on just pick up the stupid thing, pick it up, geez! You can also buy these items in stores just like anything else, but at the beginning of the game money is really hard to come by, so you're better off just trying to find it yourself. Overall I do like the alchemy system and it's definitely something different, but certain ingredients can be tough to find, depending on where you are in the game, in fact you may find yourself backtracking a ton just to find one ingredient. Unfortunately when it comes to actually using the spells you create, Secret of Evermore implements the same system as Secret of Mana where you pause the game right in the middle of battle and just spam the hell out of your attacks. It's really cheap and I wish they would have mapped a button on the controller that used magic, that way there'd be a little bit of skill involved at least in terms of timing maybe, I don't know. Also the same as Secret of Mana, in order to level up a spell you just have to use it a ton of times, ten times to level one and additional twenty times to level two, in other words you need a ridiculous amount of materials to get your magic to a useful level, and that sucks because at first your spells are really weak. So you're cruising along in this game going from place to place until you get to the most confusing and infuriating part of Secret of Evermore, the marketplace in Nobilia. Barely anybody here takes money and you have to exchange rice for jewels and exchange spice for rice and then you exchange spice and rice for beads and chickens and good god it is just beyond convoluted and you have to figure everything out and get as much as you can done within the fifteen minute time limit. The thing is you really have to go through this because the best armor and weapon can be obtained here if you follow the right sequence and you really need those because the next part of the game can be brutally difficult. But hey, even if you want to skip this section and just go with what you have, uh, you can't. You're stuck here for the full fifteen minutes. I mean come on, this is an action role-playing game. This marketplace stuff is just complicated for the sake of being complicated, it's ridiculous. It's a nice idea in theory, but it's poorly executed. I also have to mention the dungeon design in general. It's just so incredibly uninspired. Every maze seems like it lasts forever. And yeah, I appreciate the wonderful music and the creepy atmosphere, but these dungeons just drag on and on with the same enemies over and over to the point that the game starts to feel like work to get through at times. The pacing is just really poorly done. Here's a map of one dungeon early on. And then here's the next one. And then here's the next one. And as you can see, there are all these huge winding mazes and it really gets old. Even the boss fights manage to drag on forever too. You also have to deal with maybe the worst flaw in the game, the hit detection. You'll find yourself flailing away at flying insects, dinosaurs, killer plants, with you having to recharge your attack after every attempt. And sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss, and it feels like there's no rhyme or reason to it. I know some people are going to respond to that point by saying that the hit detection is just as bad in Secret of Mana, but I disagree. I thought it was decent enough in that game, plus at least you've got all sorts of different weapons you can pick up early on, and it also feels like you have more room to work with in that game. In Secret of Evermore, all the paths are so narrow, so there's not much room to dodge, and you're stuck with the bone and then later the spear as your primary weapons for a long time. You can at least switch between yourself and the dog so you can attack back and forth, and that can work pretty well. And yes, you can use alchemy as well, but certain materials are so hard to come by that I wouldn't recommend using alchemy unless you absolutely have to. So yeah, six years later, after the first video I made about this game, I hope I was able to do a little bit of a better job pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of Secret of Evermore. The strengths are pretty obvious. I mean, just look at this pixel art and listen to this music. So frickin' cool. The story is interesting. It's something different beyond the usual evil empire stuff, and there's no token love interest here either. I like the main character and I like the dialogue, plus I love the dog, of course. But I should mention that sadly this game is not two-player co-op. You need to patch the game in order to add that feature. I do like the alchemy feature, but I feel like it can be a chore to manage since certain elements are tough to come across. Plus the dungeon design here is just boring maze after boring maze and ugh, the marketplace, just awful. Still, like I said at the beginning of the video, there is no other 16-bit game and really no other video game period that has this kind of story combined with the kind of vibe and atmosphere that Secret of Evermore has. It's a truly unique game, so for that reason alone, I really think it's worth checking out just to see if you can stomach the game's flaws. If you can, then you'll really dig this game. If you can't, then I don't blame you. Personally, I've grown to enjoy this game a little bit more over the years, despite its shortcomings, so I do think it's worth trying out just to see if it's your kind of game. All right, I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.