I will defend Secret of Evermore until I die with words of its encouragement and my own blood choking me into sweet oblivion.
Secret of Evermore was never meant to be part of the Seiken (or Secret of) series, supposedly (the ring system kinda defeats that explanation), so its barely fair to compare it to Mana.
I present the following items to be considered:
- Secret of Evermore was more concise. You had four major worlds and thats all you needed. You traveled across them at a decent pace and had a reason to go back.
- Better level design. Secret of Mana's biggest weakness was so much BLAH space to travel. Little if any puzzle or level design at all. Evermore had dark cave mazes, a pyramid labyrinth where you needed to make use of your partner, a hedge maze, the broken towers, that really cool Greek Temple thing and more.
- MUCH less buggy.
- LOTS more secrets and easter eggs and fun stuff. Cecil Harvey for gods sakes. FFVI characters.
- A much better script that actually sounds like it was written by real people.
- I'd argue Secret of Evermore has better graphics. I wouldn't argue it has a better soundtrack, but its soundtrack is really good.
- A much better weapon system. You only need three weapons in these games (plus a bazooka!) I don't know why it keeps the old ones instead of automatically upgrading them, but oh well.
Also, if you just remember there is a bookcase stuck out that has a hidden vent, you can easily get through the Dog Maze.