Secret of Evermore (SNES) review "Seems there should be a slightly-altered Edgar Allen Poe line I could put here..."

Back when I owned it in the late 1990s, I was under the impression that Secret of Evermore was a spin-off of Square’s Secret of Mana. I mean, it made perfect sense. They were released by the same company, they both started with Secret of and they shared similar mechanics.

But I was wrong, at least according to every single source I’ve found. And even I and my world-encompassing ego have to eventually come to the conclusion that if I believe one thing and every other damn person, many of whom have more knowledge about this stuff than I do, is saying something else, maybe — just maybe — I might be the one who’s incorrect. For me, this is progress.

Interestingly, those same sources also point out that in Square’s library, Secret of Evermore is unique due to it being developed in America. Now that wasn’t a surprise to me. You control a young boy and his dog. After leaving the theater after a fun-filled afternoon of B movies, you wind up in an abandoned mansion where events happen that result in the duo being transported to a prehistoric land in the strange world of Evermore. Solve problems there and you’ll wind up traveling to places based on an amalgamation of ancient Egypt and Rome, then a medieval fantasy-land and finally a space station. Meanwhile, our movie buff protagonist will regularly remark on how his adventures mirror his favorite films, while his dog changes its appearance in each world, starting out as a savage-looking wolf in the prehistoric land and winding up a laser-firing robot in the space station.

Overall, there is an actual plot involving a handful of the boy’s hometown’s residents being transported to Evermore and a villain creating body doubles of those people to take over and rule the place in his name. However, for the most part, you’ll be bopping various enemies and running around a number of diverse locations while trying to help the transplanted locals keep their lands under control, with the true baddie not being revealed until the very end of your quest.

All that bopping and running definitely feels like a slightly altered take on Mana. You’ll get a handful of different weapons that tend to have various out-of-battle uses, such as chopping weeds or smashing walls, to help you get around the world. Of course, they also are handy in battle. As you use each one, you’ll get more proficient with them and be able to hold down the attack button to charge up your next blow. Typically, this just means a more powerful attack, but with the spears, charging them up allows you to throw them for an effective ranged attack.

Equipment and magic are selected by calling up a menu in the form of a wheel that appears around your character. Those spells, or “alchemy formulas”, work like a somewhat improved take on how Mana did things. At least you now can freely move in an attempt to evade a few of them; although, for others, you’ll still have the screen freezing while you absorb unavoidable damage — which was probably my biggest Mana gripe and one that I would have preferred to see completely fixed in this game, instead of just partially so.

Another difference between this game and Mana is how that magic, or alchemy, works. As opposed to your character getting so many magic points and being able to cast spells until they run out, you have to obtain components for each formula. You get those formulas by talking to various people, many of whom also sell a handful of components. Each formula requires one or more of a couple of those components and, as long as you have what’s required, you can cast that spell.

On the surface this is a pretty neat idea that’s improved a bit by how your dog can sniff out all sorts of components while you’re traveling through Evermore’s lands. It can get annoying, though. Much like in Mana, your formulas get more powerful with use, so you’ll likely want to focus on a few favorites, so they’ll be powerful enough to cause legit damage to late-game foes. However, many components are easy to acquire in one land and much harder to find in other places and you won’t be able to backtrack until you’re near your journey’s end, so actually being able to reliably cast your best attacks can be tougher than expected.

However, your trip through the world of Evermore will mostly be an enjoyable one. There are a wide variety of places to explore from swamps to pyramids to crumbling castles, with each littered with secrets to ferret out and a variety of enemies and bosses to overcome. On my last trip through this game, I finally was able to challenge the space station’s extremely well-hidden bonus boss, something that had eluded me previously. I mean, the fight wasn’t all that much fun, being little more than a back-and-forth spell-casting frenzy, but it was cool to take on a foe that had eluded me for decades!

Another neat thing about this game is your dog companion. At times, you’ll have to control him to advance the plot. At other times, you might decide you’d rather control him. Really, the boy and dog are a great example of a game making two “different but equal” playable characters. The boy is versatile with three different kinds of weapons and an ever-growing collection of formulas allowing him to blast enemies, heal himself and the dog and advance past certain obstacles. Meanwhile, the dog might be a straight-forward attacker, but does so with far more ferocity than the boy can muster. Oftentimes, I’d see it causing three or four times the boy’s damage per attack, especially late in the game when it’s evolved into its laser-emitting robotic form.

If I were to criticize the journey through Evermore for reasons other than how some spells freeze the game until you’ve absorbed your unavoidable damage or how it can be tough to keep stocked up with various alchemy components, I’d focus my complaints on the game’s final chapter. Simply put, the space station is a linear and far less interesting setting than the three main regions you’ll spend the bulk of your time exploring. And it ends with an absolute marathon of a final boss confrontation where you’ll fight multiple waves of tough enemies, a much more powerful version of an early-game boss and the actual final boss with no breaks in between these battles. It just takes forever to get through all of this and it was hard to not feel the designers would be better served to simply create an epic encounter instead of forcing players to slog through a seemingly never-ending menagerie of mini-bosses and bosses.

Still, Secret of Evermore was fun to revisit. While it might not have been one of Square’s best SNES cartridges, it has more than its share of charm. Containing a variety of places to explore and lots of secrets to find throughout them, I found it easy to be drawn into its world. Sure, some of those flaws kept me from being completely entranced with what I was seeing and doing, but this is a game I’ve played through three or four times and that’s got to say something. It might not be perfect, but it does have something — possibly how so much of it feels like an imaginative child’s frenetic daydreams come to life — that keeps drawing me back in.

Community review by overdrive (September 12, 2025) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.