Why Secret of Evermore Was a Horrible Game, and Why It Gets a Worse Rap Than It Deserves

by Zach Francks 

A while ago, my sister, who was recently addicted to RPGs, was looking for games of mine to play and happened to decide to play through one of my many Square titles, Secret of Evermore. I had beaten that game and disowned it as one of the worst RPGs I had ever played. I ranted on BBSs and in chat rooms on how much that game sucked, and the vast majority of people I talked to agreed. But when my sister played it again, I took a second look at the game, and realized it wasn't as bad as I had made it out to be. Indeed, it has many original features and many fun aspects that made it appealing. Here are my opinions on why the game was a big flop and why it deserves much more respect than it got.

Why Secret of Evermore is poor:

Secret of Evermore is a blatant rip-off of Secret of Mana. It's an adventure-style game that uses a ring command-type system. They didn't quite get it right, though, and many of the menus / sub menus were stupid and confusing. The game play wasn't too great and aiming was quite a hassle. The whole rip-off idea of Secret of Mana's walking engine was used, but with only two people it lost much of what made it cool in the first place. The fact that you only had two people by itself was a drag, but the fact that one of them dying ended your game made it worse.

Also, the weapons were quite dumb. Each weapon only had three levels, and you had to re-learn any levels you might have already had for any new weapons of the same type you had. The alchemy wasn't too effective at low levels, and building up formulas only raised your level for the particular formula you used. This coupled with the fact that ingredients are expensive, rare, and hard to find made it nearly impossible to build up some of the more useful formulas. (i.e. Feathers and brimstone are two hard ingredients to buy, and the only guy I can remember selling them was in the deep forest by the Chessboard.)

The last boss of Secret of Evermore was perhaps the worst part of it. He seemed easier than those metal spiders or the metal raptors! He didn't even look like a last boss. The ending was one that makes the combined controversial endings to FFVI AND FFVII to shame. It wasn't suspenseful, it was more predictable than a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, and it was quite a disappointment.

Other than that, there was cheesy text, cheap looking characters (like that funny toga man with the scary smile), and at times a weak plot...

But that really isn't deserving of Secret of Evermore. It wasn't really that bad...

Why Secret of Evermore is pretty cool:

It is one of the more innovative games I've played. The alchemy was a great addition and was very original and fun. With all the hidden formulas (many of which I never found, like sting or lance) you could search until the end of time and probably be missing some. It made the game challenging sometimes, trying to manage your ingredients (I had spent much time trying to figure how to do the most damage while still being able to cast 1 up or something), and trying to manage which formulas to bring. The game itself was somewhat challenging at times, and IMO more challenging as a whole than FF VII.

Another very innovative thing was the marketplace. The trading and bartering was very original and the fact that you could possibly trade something for something worse made it something you had to think about. It was quite cool though, how many hoops you had to jump through to get some items, especially since you often had to go back and forth between "time zones".

The game also had great music. It was sometimes nothing but ambient noises or sometimes really soft drumming, but it was always suitable and appropriate. It also had some great graphics in places, especially for backgrounds. It makes excellent use of a 16-bit sound processor, and though it doesn't have any great memorable pieces like Aerith's theme, or Forever Rachel, it was really a great soundtrack.

Also, Secret of Evermore is one of the most coherent games as far as the text and dialogue. Since it was a direct English game it didn't face quite as many problems with translation errors or typos. It was also an achievement since it was made directly to English by Squaresoft. Some of it was even funny. And there were puns that are hard to find from translations (after all puns are only capable of happening within a language).

I think Secret of Evermore should be respected. If there was a game that was that innovative, but with some of the minor problems fixed, it would be a game worthy of the Square name. And to those of you who complained about Secret of Evermore in the past, perhaps it's time you drug that copy out of your time capsule, steel vault, or nuclear waste disposal unit, and gave it a second look... and a second chance.