The adventures of a boy and his dog through a very strange world. Let's find mudpeppers!
The Secret of Evermore borrows heavily (well, steals) from The Secret of Mana in the form of its inventory system and basic mechanics. Shunning random battles, all fights take place on-screen. The weapon recharge time is used, too. This definitely did not make a great impression on fans of Mana's engine, as it could be perceived as a straight rip-off without much effort on its own part. Thankfully, this is not really the case. While not as large as Mana, it does have its own unique areas, enemies, weapons, and its own spell casting system.
Rather than favoring the traditional magic spells which consume MP, Evermore relies on alchemy. Instead of vague magical potions, these formulas require natural ingredients which may be found around the world or purchased from certain characters. Most of the formulas are taught by various people encountered in towns, dungeons or just wandering around the land. Some are easier to find than others, but the trickier ones are never required... for example, Sting is a useful formula, taught by a man wandering the desert invested with spiders and tumbleweeds. Finding one guy in a desert isn't exactly a piece of cake. If one decides not to seek him out, there is no penalty... you just won't be able to release bees upon enemies.
Unlike some RPGs, you don't often travel alone. Your dog has several functions. It can smell ingredients for your alchemy spells, attack enemies on its own, and travel independantly to areas the hero cannot reach. You will need to control the dog for several switch puzzles, by they simple 'sit here' buttons or operating multiple doors so the hero can proceed. The dog's AI is a tad on the idiotic side, as he will follow into peril or just join back up with you when you want him to stay somewhere else. Still, he doesn't get stuck quite so much as characters from, say, Secret of Mana.
There are four themed areas in the world of Evermore. There is Omnitopia, the orbiting space station introduced when your dog's chewing habits zap you out of the real world. However, you are quickly ejected into the dinosaur-invested Prehistoria. Later on, an interesting land of Greek and Egyptian fusion called Antiqua is visited. Then, there is the fantasy-laden world of Gothica. There is to be no whining about naming these areas as a spoiler, as all of them are displayed by the game's own demo. Each area has its own unique architecture and at least three native enemies. While there are some color-swap enemies, they are not the standard. A few enemies do cross over from area to area, but most of these make sense, such as the spiders.
Much of the game is pretty much based on map exploration and simple puzzles. Mazes are also rather standard, having at least one per area. Unfortunately some of these are quite irritating, such as the forest mazes of Gothica because most of the screens are very similar if not identical. Unless one wants to do trial-and-error, mapping or look up a solution, one can wander for an inordinate amount of time. Most of the sewer mazes, on the other hand, are less tedious. World exploration on the whole is more enjoyable. Some of the areas are very attractively done or are at least interesting, like the swamps of Prehistoria with their adorable big-headed frog creatures.
Combat is relatively solid, although it can be rather tricky to jab enemies with certain weapons, or that some enemy spells seem to cut right through your efforts to cast, say, a healing formula. Saving is encouraged due to some overly cheap bosses, such as Sterling the dragon, whom can and will grab the hero and toss him below if you attempt to be near enough to hit him with conventional weapons. The Verminator is also very difficult to whack with standard gear, as well. Weapons themselves are a kind of weak area for the game... in each area, you find an entirely new set of weapons, each of which will antiquate your old ones. One would wonder why an NPC could not simply upgrade them, such as the axe, to allow one to smash through the tougher barriers? Some of the later alchemy spells are a tad too effective... barrier negates seemingly all physical damage, even from final boss!
The music choices are interesting. Each of the four lands have drastically different backgrounds, all of which are suitable. Prehistoria has one of the oddest, as it is mostly more ambient noise than actual music. Aside from the questionable churning noise (the forest hungers?), it's rather pleasant. However, there isn't much variety for major battle music. It's pretty much just the same track. Each time. It's not a bad track, but it could stand more variety, considering the number of major battles in the game! The most irritating aspect of Evermore, however, are the few but potentially game-crippling programming bugs. One should NEVER save if the flying machine disappears. In Ebon Keep, never open the top-right cell last, or the passage into the castle will never open. Still, many older titles have bugs similar to these, but saving after, say, a door never activates, you will need to either resume an earlier save or start over.
Overall, Evermore is actually quite a fun game. It's boggling how the main character can be easily fooled by clothing-color swaps, but that was pretty standard. Heroes were usually trusting fools back then! Evermore isn't the most technically complex or deep RPG, but it's a fun trip all the same.