It has the unfortunate distinction of being the lesser cousin of Secret of Mana. That doesn’t make it bad, it just makes it look bad by comparison. A balance hack for it is a really good thing.
Lesser cousin my foot.
Evermore has better music, better writing, and I would agree it even looks better.
All Mana's got over it is more content.
You can't even call Mana balanced considering the infinite magic loop.
I think BRPXQZME's point is simply that it is
known as being related to the Mana series, rather than being known for it's own merit. No one here is saying Evermore is a bad game. I myself have a copy and played through it dozens of times as a kid.
As I grew older and learned to romhack, I was actually surprised that the people who did this were American, and actually implemented a VWF into the game (whereas the team who worked on Secret of Mana did not).
~DS