History VideoGame / SecretOfEvermore

** Your starter weapon, the Bone Crusher, can't cut through foliage. You can't travel north of Fire Eyes' Village until you get the Spider Claw.
** The switches in Antiqua have to be hit from a distance, and your prehistoric spear is too light to do the job. You have to find the heavier Bronze Spear.
** Stone barriers and blocked doorways that your Spider Claw is too weak to demolish, forcing you to find a Bronze Axe. Later on, Tinker gives you the Knight Basher to break down the barricades blocking access to his brother's place. (After visiting Omnitopia, the same chest has the Atom Smasher, but it isn't required to complete the game.)

** The Hero can equip 13 weapons that can all be upgraded twice. 2600 skill points are required to master all the weapons, but each monster will net you a paltry 1 or more skill points. Most of those weapons won't see enough use to reach Level 2.
** Your Alchemy formulas will become stronger the more you use them, and can potentially be maxed out at level 9.

** Elizabeth warns of the "vicious volcano Vipers" before sending you out on your second quest.

* AstralFinale: Omnitopia was ''Halo'' before ''Halo'': a ring-shaped space station encircling the planet. (At least in the illustrations.) The last battle is fought here, but the Hero needs to perform one more errand on the surface world first.

** There's an out-of-place [[AttackDrone Guard Bot]] in Gothica which you fight. But it's not the same as the bots you fought previously. This guy will seriously wreck the Hero's day if he's prepared.

* ABoyAndHisX: It's just a little wire-haired terrier in the beginning. When you reunite in Prehistoria, the Dog has mutated into a huge, hulking cave wolf instead. He keeps changing as you travel between the worlds/regions. He can handle himself in a fight, and tends to inflict more damage than you in melee mode; you'll probably find yourself setting his AI to passive so he doesn't kill-steal. He can also sniff out chests and Alchemy ingredients on the ground that are invisible to the Hero, but he can't pick up or use items (so Alchemy is out of the question for him). Unlike his owner, the Dog only requires one piece of armor, and upgrades can be found in every region. You'd never have made it to the end of the journey without the Dog.
* BrickJoke: In Antiqua, you find a boulder suspiciously similar to the ones you levitated in Prehistoria. Do the same here, and Tiny comes out and demonstrates his superior strength by picking up the boulder and throwing it away. ''Far'' away. When he inevitably ends up at the far end of the desert again, the boulder will land and form a bridge for the Hero to cross. Lampshaded by the Hero:

** The washout from the volcano also floods the river in Antiqua. It creates a gap which you need the Dog to jump across so it can wheel over a platform for you to ride.

** You fight Thraxx/Choleoptera inside one of these.

* ChekhovsVolcano: The Volcano in the middle of Prehistoria. You go inside, fight through the Vipers, confront Elizabeth's Evil Twin, then get blown out the top to wash up in Antiqua.

** The Queen and her weirdo puppet show. The Hero can watch the entire show unfold if you wander west of the throne room, but he can't influence the play or free the King from their thrall, at least not until later. The King is stuck in a trance in a theatre box, unable to do anything but laugh giddily at the puppet show.

** The player catches a brief glimpse of Ruffleberg on the {{space station}} before being dumped into Prehistoria.

** "Caemilla" enlists you to lower the "drawbridge" in Ebon Keep so her men can clean house. A shortcut to Ebon Keep does appear later, but it's a simple, wooden truss bridge with a roof. Even stranger, you emerge on an entirely-different bridge on the other end. (Wrong size, shape and material.) In fact, it's unclear how the bridges near the Chessboard keep disappearing and reappearing, since they're made of stone and can't be retracted.

* MagicStaff: Mad Monks retaliate to your close range attacks by spinning their staves, which inflicts Plague (a stronger version of Poison) or Confound on contact.
* MagikarpPower: The Spear-type weapons are impossibly hard to use in close quarters combat (i.e. Lv. 1 attacks), but very quickly get overpowered after you gain a level. It's a long polearm weapon which is wielded in the worst way possible: to deliver incredibly short range attacks that will usually get you killed in the process. But once you can throw it... Combine a spear with the formula which gives you near-instant charge attacks and you got yourself a projectile which does more damage than a bazooka shell and doesn't send you flying.

** Carniflowers are among your most troublesome enemies in the jungle because they block important paths and will swallow any character in range, chomping on them for big damage before spitting them out. If you don't keep away from its tendrils, your support character will have to shred the plant to prevent it from leeching too much of your HP.

** Bugmuck Swamp, full of [[LilyPadPlatform lily pad paths]] that only appear when you kill certain enemies that need you to take the long way around to get to.
** The desert south of Nobilia, where east and west eventually wrap around to each other. You only have to run straight north or south to reach your destination, but this one contains a difficult-to-find alchemy formula named Sting.

* MoneySpider: Lampshaded in one case where a shady character is offering the amulet you need to get a ride across the desert and charging the outrageous price of 10,000 Jewels for it. Worse yet, exchanging your money for the local standard effectively cuts your wallet in half. To come up with the money, you'll most likely have to do a lot of grinding. When you actually do return with the money, the cloaked figure is astonished that you went to the trouble.

** When its shield is up, Aegis is immune to all forms of damage. It also summons monsters to keep you occupied. Aegis actually has no other modes of attack.

** The dancing puppets, [[{{Satan}} Mephista and Old Nick]].

** The whole purpose of the Insect Incense: All insect monsters, such as mosquitoes and spiders, no longer do any damage to you. Your character simply stands there while they awkwardly attack.

** Pits serve as nothing more than an obstacle or an annoyance after one of those Hall of Collosia bridges retract when the timer runs out. It should be lethal, but the hero lampshades, "Boy, I'm glad we missed those spikes at the bottom!", or, "I'm glad we found that secret passage in the pit! Now, let's not go down there again." (Just take his word for it.) They also don't do any damage.

* NotTheIntendedUse: The Energize spell fully charges your attack meter in about a second, letting you make rapid full-power or charged attacks. However, because attacking and dashing use the same [[SprintMeter meter]], it can also be used to run continuously without tiring out. Since the number of landing spots for the Windwalker is extremely limited, you'll still be traveling a lot on foot, and Energize can save quite a bit of time while you run to the Alchemist to restock on supplies.

* TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness: Horace's Twin holds a conference call in one of the cinematics. At this point in the story, Carltron hasn't been identified as part of Ruffleberg's party, and his face is only vaguely-outlined. Evil Horace keeps his back turned to the viewer.

** For weapon grinding, try the southern jungle in Prehistoria. Weapons gain experience based on kills, regardless of the enemy's strength. So the easiest way to grind the late-game weapons is to head back into the jungle, slay all the [[TheGoomba Goombas]] you see, then leave and come back to respawn them. Your weapons will hit level 3 within an hour.
** Right outside Nobilia, you will encounter Bone Buzzards. They give 300 XP, way more than most enemies in the region, along with 40 Jewels. Their defense against alchemy is pitiful, so a Lv. 1 attack formula will kill one, and you've just learned the Crush formula from Blimp one screen away (and he sells the ingredients for it). The math works out that casting Crush on a Bone Buzzard makes you more money than it costs to buy the ingredients, so you can power level Crush for profit.

** In the early game, the first boss fight against Thraxx is a perfect spot to grind both characters. For the duration of the fight, four Maggots will constantly spawn as they are defeated. They award a decent amount of exp and currency, but the player will soon be able to one-hit them making them respawn very quickly. The only danger is from Thraxx casting Acid Rain, which will only do about 20 damage to the characters. The only limit to grinding the fight is the player's inventory of healing items, but Maggots will often drop a Petal upon death. An experienced player can easily use this opportunity to acheive level 10 or beyond and a sizable amount currency.

** There's a lot you can miss in this game without even realizing it. Probably the worst offender is Gothica as a whole: the alleyway shops close once you kill Mungola, the castle doors lock once you return the worker's key, and if you open the wrong chest in Lance's house, you won't meet Lance or get the Alchemy formula of the same name.
** The various trade items can be acquired in multiple places if you miss them, but it's still very easy to accidentally trade the wrong item and never see it again. The merchants around the world who trade those items will offer you something different if you already have what they'd normally offer. So not only can certain trade items be lost forever, but which ones you can lose depends on which ones you already have. Your best bet is to rig the deals so you can collect the more desirable charms. A merchant in Ivor Tower will sell you back all of the charms you traded in Nobilia for reasonably cheap. They're only lost forever if you don't pick them up before you finish Gothica and everyone moves back to Ebon Keep.

* PlatformBattle: Sterling isn't an evil dragon, just an oversized guard dog. He'll continually hurl you off the top of Gomi's Tower, and if that isn't bad enough, he'll keep pelting you with fireballs as you climb all the way back up.

** There is another instance in Antiqua which is an {{easter egg}}: There's an invisible, slow-moving whirlpool right outside Nobilia. Wait long enough (it takes an eternity), and the Hero finally gets sucked underground, where he inexplicably finds 99 bags of rice and 99 bags of spice. More than enough to clean up at the market [[MiniGame mini-game]] coming up next.

* ReactorBoss: In an inversion, you fight Magmar in the Volcano Core, which consists of a mess of pipes and a boiler. Evil Elizabeth threatens to turn off the heat and trigger an ice age in Prehistoria. After you win, she turns up the heat in frustration, and volcano blows up, anyway. But the temperature on the pleateau stays the same, and the Hero and his Dog are blown out the volcano cone to safety.

** Vipers are covered in some kind of spiked carapace. They will suddenly turn into a wheel and juke around the battlefield, mowing down anyone who comes near. Alchemy is definitely recommended when facing a bunch of them.
** Evil Elizabeth's "pet rock", Magmar, is some kind of lava golem who can roll into a ball and careen around the pipes. It makes it difficult to land a shot when he reverts back and starts spitting fireballs. He also rolls into the lava pit periodically to recover HP.

* SchizoTech: Evermore was specifically designed for this trope, and the game wouldn't be as memorable as it is if not for the silly and insane juxtapositions. Did we mention the robot toaster dog with the laser cannon on its back yet?

** At the beginning of the game, you can walk to the east side of Fire Eyes' Village, but [[NPCRoadblock you will be blocked by a villager]] unless you talked to her first. You can get past him by standing near him, then wait for your AI-controlled Dog to wander past him. Press Select when the dog is on the other side, and you can skip to the next screen. This trick also works near the entrance the cave north of Horace's Camp.
** You can skip the obnoxious rat king fight. When you first emerge in Ebon Keep, don't fight him. Instead, head back to the chess board and the path to Ivor Tower will be gone--but the one to Ebon Keep will be visible? (Fake Caemilla sent you to the sister city to lower the drawbridge. The game assumes you've already met the real Caemilla if you enter Ebon Keep.) Now you can enter the old castle from a side entrance and talk directly to the Queen and Tinker. The problem is you can't go through the atrium where Verminator is since his crates still block it, plus the game might freeze if you try to enter his room.
** There's a dangerous gate glitch in the Great Pyramid extension with Tiny. This room can only be visited once, when you show up demanding the Diamond Eyes. Once you've opened the gate leading to Tiny, if you try to leave at any time before beating him, the gate will slam shut permanently. Meaning you won't be able to get the Diamond Eyes from Tiny. Which means you cant beat the game since the Diamond Eyes are essential to completing Tinker's rocket ship... unless you exploit another glitch. Get the Gauge (another component for the rocket) from the Volcano, then leave the area. Now return to the Volcano, and presto: there will be another Gauge waiting for you? Even more oddly, this Gauge actually acts as if it were the Diamond Eyes, thus circumventing the Tiny fight.

** When the Hero and his Dog are exploring the Rufflebergs' dilapidated mansion on the hill, he finds "a chainsaw, a mummy, and a balloon animal". A chainsaw and mummy are also found in ''VideoGame/ManiacMansion''.

--->'''Hero''': "Well, [Dog]. [[Creator/LaurelAndHardy This is another fine mess you've gotten us into.]]"

* SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness: The Hero starts out in Omnitopia, but his bazooka is destroyed in the shuttle crash, forcing him to make do with blunter instruments. As you trek across the prehistoric, Bronze Age, and Medieval worlds, your weapons and armor improve.

* FinalDungeonPreview: The game gives you a few very brief moments of playing in Omnitopia just as the opening sequence ends, culminating with a fight with several robots before you're shipped down to Evermore proper. Sure enough, Omnitopia is the final dungeon of the game. There's even a slight nod to the Dog's robot form just before you travel to the surface.

* FlashbackEffects: The prologue is told in [[DeliberatelyMonochrome Deliberate Monochrome]].

** "Caemilla" enlists you to lower the "drawbridge" in Ebon Keep so her men can clean house. A shortcut to Ebon Keep does appear later, but it's a regular wooden truss bridge with a roof. More perplexingly, you appear on an entirely-different bridge on the other end. (Wrong size, shape and material.) In fact, it's unclear how the bridges near the Chessboard keep disappearing and reappearing, since they're made of stone and can't be retracted.

* GardenOfEvil: The Omnitopia Greenhouse contains Flowering Deaths, carnivorous plants that were genetically-engineered to [[OneHitKill kill anyone who gets too close in one hit]].

* GlobalAirship: Tinker's flying machine. Soon to be replaced by one of those Omnitopian space shuttles. However, their use is limited by the fact that are only five landing zones the entire surface of Evermore, plus one more in Omnitopia (only accessible by the shuttle), so it's more like [[WarpWhistle a giant level select menu]].

* GreenHillZone: The game begins on a space station, but the Hero is swiftly jettisoned out the airlock and sent crashing to the surface, awakening in an atmospheric jungle. This place seems more hostile than it actually is. There are plenty of hazards, but the enemies don't chew up ''too'' much HP, and they leave [[HealingHerb health-restoring Petals behind]]. The ambush by the Raptors is just for training purposes, and the reward isn't so great that you feel punished for losing.

* ArtDeco: Ruffleberg's flashy mansion is as kooky as he is, with humanoid statues, checkered roofs, a globe, and other abstract shapes.

* AuthorityInNameOnly: The evil queen built a sterile castle on the opposite end of Gothica. Under her orders, the citizenry abandoned their homes, and the old castle was allowed to overrun with rats, leading to the oft-quoted line, "I'm King of the rats, I tell ya! King of the rats!"

** Holding down the attack button to charge your weapon. You cannot simply charge your weapon when your stamina is at 100%; the Hero will automatically swing it around when you press the button, dropping it back to 0%. So, you hold down the button and wait for it to fill back up to 100%. Then fill it up ''again'' to level one. Then fill it up ''once more'' to level two, if you have it. (Which takes about three times longer than a normal swing.) Granted, charged melee attacks are powerful and game-breaking in some instances (Neutron Sword + Energize); but more often than not, you'll watch your HP whittle away as your enemies maul you to death.
** Alchemy. It really is a novel idea, but in practice it isn't very effective. Individual formulas take a long time to level up and ingredients can get pricey, so a player will be inclined to save their cash and stick with what they have rather than stock up on a new ingredient type for a new formula. The game forks over Heal, Cure, Defend, Hard Ball, and Flash in the opening world before you even get your third weapon, and they'll cover your strategic needs for the rest of the game (healing, raising defense, and attacking). Later, you'll want to add Crush and Fireball to the mix (better firepower and their ingredients are common in Antiqua and Gothica). And there are utility formulas you'll want like Revive, Miracle Cure, and Barrier. But beyond Antiqua, new attack formulas just don't scale well against increasingly powerful enemies, while the assorted healing formulas the game offers are unnecessary because Heal is cheaper and leveled-up already.
** Nitro is the strongest formula in the game in terms of power. By the time you find Nitro, you're on your way to retrieve the item which lets you access the {{final boss}}es. To add insult to injury, the ingredients needed to use Nitro can only be bought from two merchants in separate regions, both of whom are in hard-to-reach locations, And each only sells one of the two ingredients needed for Nitro. It's as though the developers designed the spell to purposefully invoke this trope.
** The Laser Lance and Atom Smasher. During most chapters, the sword is the weakest weapon, the axe is the middle ground, and the spear is the strongest. The three Omnitopia chapter weapons are all equal with a 50 attack rating. You got the Neutron Blade at the start of the chapter and likely have been using it the most so far, and you only get these two weapons just before returning to Evermore for the Energy Core for the final boss melee, so there's little room to use them and build them up either. In the end, they will both prove quite useless since all three weapons have equal attack power, but swords get a bonus from the Silver Sheath whether you have it or not (due to a bug), meaning the Neutron Blade will be your strongest weapon no matter what.

** When it comes time to build Tinker's rocket, he needs a Gauge and Wheel from the Volcano's exploded boiler, so he tells you to go poking around where the debris from the eruption would have landed.
** Debris from Aegis itself can be found in Prehistoria, and its Power Core cut through Antiqua's underground before somehow ending up beneath Gothica's Chessboard.
** When you arrive in Omnitopia near the end of the game, you land in the Junkyard. You return here at the very end of the game to activate the teleporter to Carltron's lair.

* BalefulPolymorph: Keep talking to the philosopher in Nobilia. He rants that everyone is a puppet of an invisible, "button-pushing overlord". This can interpreted as being either the player or Carltron. The game might prompt you to turn him into a goat, a chicken, or a basket to silence him; this can again be interpreted as willful cruelty by the player or Carltron altering the simulation to punish one of his critics.
* BambooTechnology: Gomi appears to be building a skyscraper using whatever junk he has lying around, plus some twine. Surprisingly averted in the primitive world.
* BarFight: In the Crustacia tavern, there's a pair of [=NPCs=] who endlessly trade blows, and their dialog is what you'd expect from this game. "Do you mind? We're trying to hit each other here!"
* BattleBoomerang: Oddly used not by the player (as in ''Secret''), but by a Nobilian gladiator. It's one of his long-range attacks.

* BeeBeeGun: The inconspicuous "Sting" formula. It summons a giant beehive which launches a small swarm of bees at opponents.

* BlindMistake: An old lady in the vents mistakes the Dog for a furry child and gives him a [[MasterKey skeleton key]] to the castle. Later on, we meet a castle guard who mentions that his wife has poor eyesight and tumbled into one of the vents one day, never to return.

* BoringButPractical: Of the three weapon categories, the axe. Swords are the first weapon you get in any chapter. You train with them the longest, and they're the easiest to use, but they're typically weaker than the axe from the same chapter. Spears are the most powerful in their respective chapters, but the boy's method of wielding them limits their use to ranged charged attacks. Axes make the boy lunge forward, so they have a pretty good range, but without putting you in harm's way. Admittedly, the animation is a little slower, and the Lv. 2 attack leaves a lot to be desired.

** There's an out-of-place [[AttackDrone Guard Bot]] in Gothica which you fight. But it's not the same as the bots you fought previously. This guy will seriously wreck your day if you aren't prepared.

* BossRush: The final battle, in lieu of a fight with Carltron. When the butler finally gets mad enough to confront you, the professor uses that as a distraction to switch Carltron off.

* BrickJoke: In Antiqua, you find a boulder suspiciously similar to the ones you levitated in Prehistoria. Do the same here, and Tiny comes out and demonstrates his superior strength by picking up the boulder and throwing it away. Far away. When you inevitably end up at the southern end of the desert again, the boulder will land and form a bridge for you to cross. Lampshaded by the hero:

** When Aegis explodes and Tiny hurls the Power Core away, it crashes at the base of the river, which opens up a cavern into the Oglin Caves. The river is also drained, revealing a new entrance into the Great Pyramid.
** There is also a raised drawbridge in Gothica cutting off direct access to Ebon Keep.
** Obstacles like the greenhouse flowers and the heating system can kill you in Omnitopia, so you have to lower the lights/temperature, respectively.

* ChainOfDeals: Used to humorous effect in the desert city, Nobilia. You start out buying small items like bags of spice and rice, and trade your way up to the best armor and accessories in the region. Play your cards right and you'll wind up with charms that grant you permanent stat boosts. Or the Magic Gourd, which is useless.

** The Hero will come across some unlit fire pits in his travels. These function as landing lights once you get a set of wings, and they're easy to spot from the sky. You can't land your aircraft just anywhere.

** Mungola is briefly shown escaping from the sideshow exhibit in Gothica, so the player is probably expecting to fight it later. You can't approach the puppets in the castle yet, either, since the King just shouts, "Can't see! Down in front!" As expected, they're each revealed as the bosses of Ivor Tower.

** The Queen and her weirdo puppet show. You can watch the entire show unfold if you wander west of the throne room, but you can't influence the play or free the King from their thrall, at least not until later. The King is stuck in a trance in a theatre box, unable to do anything but laugh giddily at the puppet show.

** The boss of the Great Pyramid, Rimsala. The only way for it to inflict direct damage is by spinning into you. The four respawning statues in the arena cast Flash regularly, but they can be disabled for a time with an alchemy attack.

* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Yay, we beat the raptor. Who promptly exploded into flames. This makes a little more sense once you learn that Evermore was supposed to be a paradise before Carltron filled it with animatronic monsters. (Presumably the pirates are androids, too, since [[BloodlessCarnage they explode when defeated.]]) Carltron has a squad of these chrome raptors patrolling the tubeways of his city.

** Strong Heart, the chief alchemist and advisor to Elizabeth, is being held captive inside a cocoon in the Bugmuck. You have to free him with the Spider Claw, which is won by beating Thraxx.

* DoYouWantToHaggle: One merchant in particular is extremely gullible and will fall for the oldest scam in the book. During the Nobilia market sequence, it's possible to talk him down from his original asking price all the way down to a pittance (a few bags of rice and some spice) in exchange for a bunch of Amulets, which can also be used to trade for some of those tasty charms from the lowermost shops. He'll close up shop for good after that, stating "You're too shrewd." If you try to haggle with him further, however, he'll get fed up and refuse to sell you anything ever again.

** The player catches a brief glimpse of Ruffleberg at the station before being dumped into Prehistoria.

-->'''Evil Queen''': ''[misses the Hero by a mile]'' [[IMeantToDoThat I meant to do that.]]

* GangplankGalleon: Crustacia is teeming with Age of Sail-type pirates living out of a hollowed-out [[DerelictGraveyard wrecked ship]]. Yar.

* DummiedOut:
** Try using a UsefulNotes/GameGenie code (with a cartridge or an emulator) to no-clip through walls at the beginning. It is possible to walk back through the closed iris, ready the bazooka, and blow up Carltron. Doing so awards you with 10 EXP and 15 Talons. Omnitopia doesn't trade in Talons, so perhaps this was an inside joke by the developers.
** Judging by the game's code, the Cameilla robot has an attack animation which wasn't used. She hurls herself at the player E. Honda-style, just like she does in the cutscene when you defeat Mungola.

** Evermore is teeming with spiders, but they're more annoying than threating, and [[StandardStatusEffects/PoisonPlagueBleeding poison]] isn't dangerous unless you're low on health to begin with. Once you get the Insect Incense in Gothica, their attacks simply do nothing. Cut to the final battle: if you unwittingly hurt the harmless cleaning robots, you'll be attacked by Dark Spiders who ignore the Incense, can do upwards of 250 damage, and have 6000 HP. Every time you destroy the robots, more spiders spawn, with an additional one being added each time you do. They ''do'' drop the most experience of any non-[[BossBattle boss]] enemy in the game, but that's not worth prolonging this fight.

* RecursiveCanon: The theater marquee lists a showing of ''The Secret of Evermore'' in the ending, but some lingering electricity suggests that Prof. Ruffleberg's device is responsible for putting it there. We never find out if there's an actual movie with that title in the game's world.

* ComputersAreFast: Apart from the CPU partner's pathfinding ability, they will attack at precise moments when they expect to land a hit, as seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA2c0O12GJg&list=PLO2o0_k4kOrwyc46vJ98GxaKJIGzw4HUj&index=9 here]].

* WolfpackBoss:
** Rimsala, the boss of the Great Pyramid. The only way for it to inflict damage is by spinning into you, and the four respawning statues in the arena cast Flash regularly, but they can be disabled for a time with an alchemy attack.
** Mungola, the final boss of Gothica. It's just a face poking through some stage curtains which silently watches you fight a pair of puppets that defend it. Mungola occasionally casts alchemy like Fireball or Corrosion.

** Try using a VideoGame/GameGenie code (with a cartridge or an emulator) to no-clip through walls at the beginning. It is possible to walk back through the closed iris, ready the bazooka, and blow up Carltron. Doing so awards you with 10 EXP and 15 Talons. Omnitopia doesn't trade in Talons, so perhaps this was an inside joke by the developers.

* OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness: Horace's Twin holds a conference call in one of the cinematics. At this point in the story, Carltron hasn't been identified as part of Ruffleberg's party, and his face is only vaguely-outlined. Evil Horace keeps his back turned to the viewer.

* IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: The Desert of Doom.

* BarFight: In the Crustacia tavern, there's a pair of [=NPCs=] who endlessly trade blows, and their dialogue is what you'd expect from this game. "Do you mind? We're trying to hit each other here!"

* DifficultButAwesome: The Bazooka. Yes, you can load three different types of ammo into it, with Cryo-Blast shells shaving off 600 HP. (For comparison, the strongest weapons found during the Omnitopia chapter are all capped at 50.) Plus there's no need to grind up experience for the thing, nor charge it for a more powerful attack. However, each shot flings the Hero on his ass while firing (admittedly very fast) rockets straight ahead. The problem is, enemies tend to move even faster and will dodge your shots if you're a moment too slow to fire, leaving you wide open to attack as you wait to recharge back up to 100% instead of just [[PistolWhipping beaning them with the bazooka itself]]. Another problem is that shots tend to 'miss' if the enemy scrolls off-screen, a problem exacerbated by the severe recoil, even if your aim was on point. It saves on LevelGrinding if you'd rather just shoot instead of repeatedly swing a weapon for experience, but it can be difficult to get used to and master.

* ArtificialBrilliance: This review [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSXndXJGGas showcases]] how the Dog's AI holds up, 25 years after release.

* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Yay, we beat the raptor. Who promptly exploded into flames. This makes a little more sense once you learn that Evermore was supposed to be a paradise before Carltron filled it with animatronic monsters. (Presumably the pirates are androids, too, since [[BloodlessCarnage they explode when defeated.]]). Carltron has a squad of these chrome raptors patrolling the tubeways of his city.

* PlatformBoss: Sterling isn't an evil dragon, just an oversized guard dog. He'll continually hurl you off the top of Gomi's Tower, and if that isn't bad enough, he'll keep pelting you with fireballs as you climb all the way back up.

* GetBackHereBoss: Sterling isn't an evil dragon, just an oversized guard dog. He'll continually hurl you off the top of Gomi's Tower, and if that isn't bad enough, he'll keep pelting you with fireballs as you climb all the way back up.

* ThoseMagnificentFlyingMachines: Tinker offers the player one he invented, the Windwalker, to revisit other regions.

** The Bazooka. Yes, you can load three different types of ammo into it, with Cryo-Blast shells shaving off 600 HP. (For comparison, the strongest weapons found during the Omnitopia chapter are all capped at 50.) Plus there's no need to grind up experience for the thing, nor charge it for a more powerful attack. However, each shot flings the Hero across the room on his ass and fires (admittedly very fast) shots straight ahead. The problem is, enemies tend to move even faster and will dodge your shots if you're a moment too slow to fire, leaving you wide open to attack as you wait to recharge back up to 100% instead of just [[PistolWhipping beaning them with the bazooka itself]]. Another problem is that shots tend to 'miss' if the enemy scrolls off-screen, a problem exacerbated by the severe recoil, even if your aim was on point. It saves on LevelGrinding if you'd rather just shoot instead of repeatedly swing a weapon for experience, but it can be difficult to get used to and master.

* ChekhovsGun: The Hero will come across some unlit fire pits in his travels. These function as landing lights once you get a set of wings, and they're easy to spot from the sky. You can't land your aircraft just anywhere.

* OurFounder: The Dog has his own stone idol in the Nobilia square (it later crumbles away to reveal Aegis).

* HollywoodAcid: The Acid Rain and Corrosion formulas call down a bubbling, burning raincloud and a slow-acting deluge respectively.

* GreenHillZone: The game begins on a space station, but the Hero is swiftly jettisoned out the airlock and sent crashing to the surface, awakening in an atmospheric jungle. This place seems more hostile than it actually is. There are plenty of hazards, but the enemies don't chew up ''too'' much HP, and they leave health-restoring Petals behind. The ambush by the Raptors is just for training purposes, and the reward isn't so great that you feel punished for losing.

-->'''Evil Queen''': ''[misses the Hero by a mile]'' {{I meant to do that}}.

* GameBreakingBug: Talking to Tiny with the Dog will cause the came to freeze, presumably as a result of no dialogue having been scripted.

* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Yay, we beat the raptor. Who promptly exploded into flames. This makes a little more sense once you learn that Evermore was supposed to be a paradise before Carltron filled it with animatronic monsters. (Presumably the pirates are androids, too, since [[BloodlessCarnage they explode when defeated.]]). Carltron has an squad of these chrome raptors patrolling the tubeways of his city.

* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Yay, we beat the raptor. Who promptly exploded into flames. This makes a little more sense once you learn that Evermore was supposed to be a paradise before Carltron filled it with animatronic monsters (and presumably pirates since [[BloodlessCarnage they also explode]]). Indeed, Carltron has an squad of chrome raptors patrolling the tubeways of his city.

** You'll find spiders all throughout the game, but none of them are more than an annoyance as they don't do much, and poison isn't dangerous unless you're low on health to begin with. Once you get the Insect Incense in Gothica, their attacks simply do nothing to you anymore. Cut to the final battle: if you unwittingly kill the harmless cleaning robots, you'll face Dark Spiders who ignore the Incense, can do upwards of 250 damage, and have 6000 HP. Every time you kill the cleaning robots, more spiders spawn, with one additional one being added every time you do. However, they do drop the most experience of any non-[[BossBattle boss]] enemy in the game.

The plot isn't as complex as it sounds, and the game is full of parodies of the genre, especially the path-of-least-resistance economic tropes: There's a whole segment with the boy hocking VendorTrash and haggling with merchants. Likewise, spending time in the boy's company is pretty entertaining, with the boy constantly comparing his predicaments to various (awful) movies, and his dog {{shapeshifting}} into various forms (wolf, greyhound, poodle, robot) depending on which locale they're in. It's strictly 1-player, unlike ''Secret'', though a 2-player [[GameMod hack]] for it exists.

* ComputersAreFast: besides the computer partner's reduced need for handling controls, they will actually attack at precise moments where they expect to land a hit, as made use of and indicated [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA2c0O12GJg&list=PLO2o0_k4kOrwyc46vJ98GxaKJIGzw4HUj&index=9 here]].

* CargoCult: Horace's Twin rallies the people by declaring the newly-arrived Dog a god because he resembles a big statue in the square.

* HailfirePeaks: The Volcano is split into three parts: A lava pool which requires you to Levitate rocks to form bridges and unblock tunnels, a strange cooling system which is full of rushing water, and a giant boiler room which maintains the temperature. Too low and the plateau freezes solid; too high and the volcano erupts.

* ItMayHelpYouOnYourQuest: The Hero is skeptical that the wolf-dog is the same one from Podunk, so he throws a stick for the wolf to fetch. The wolf returns with a dinosaur bone.

** There's an out-of-place [[AttackDrone Guard Bot]] in Gothica which you fight. BUt it's not the same as the bots you fought previously. This guy will seriously wreck your day if you aren't prepared.