"One of the best Castlevania's and best Portable CV title yet"

STORY/INTRO 10/10: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is the second game on the Nintendo DS and the direct sequel of Castlevania: Bloodlines, which was the only Castlevania, game on Sega Genesis. It takes place in 1944, 27 years after Bloodlines, which took place in 1917. You play as Jonathan Morris who is the whip-bearing descendant and son of John Morris from Bloodlines and grandson of Quincy Morris from the actual Bram Stoker novel. Charlotte Aulin is the other character you get to alternate between and is a witch kind of character. Castlevania Bloodlines from the Sega Genesis tried to tie in the Bram Stoker Dracula novel with the CV storyline and although it did it in a way that doesn't always make a lot of sense no true CV fan can say that CV: Bloodlines wasn't one of the best Genesis games that came out for the system and is truly under-appreciated.

Basically what has happened since the last game is that once again Dracula's Castle has mysteriously appeared out of the blue and a vampire by the name “Brauner” has resurrected Dracula's Castle to obtain power. Your Jonathan Morris along with his childhood friend, Charlotte have the task of stopping Brauner at all costs to bring death and destruction amongst the world. As with every Castlevania game before it you trek into a castle and go through a nice long quest to take down the dirty little blood sucker, except no Dracula…. or at least as we know at this point. The Storyline is great much better than most previous Castlevania's and about on par with Dawn of Sorrow. It does tie in a lot of elements and some loose ends from the Sega Genesis title much better than the CV: Bloodlines tied in the Bram Stoker novel originally which it did kind of liberally and loosely. Story is never a huge element with Castlevania but its much more effectively done in this game than in any other game and in most non-rpg 2D games.

GAMEPLAY 10/10: The game play is actually just as good as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which is almost impossible to pull off. I really liked the way the characters control and switching between Charlotte or Jonathan or summoning one or the other beside you is as smooth as it could be. The dual character system is one of the biggest changes to the game. You can play as just Jonathan or switch to Charlotte kind of like you could do in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse for NES with Trevor Belmont, Grant or Sypha, You can also summon the other character to be on the screen at the same time. Some puzzles use both characters to solve them but there's not a whole ton but there really doesn't need to be a slew of them since this is Castlevania. Charlotte is more of your witch kind of spell bearing character that has a lot of powerful magical spells that take place of Jonathan's usual sub weapons and she uses books that have swords and weapons pop out of them. The difficulty is a little harder than most people maybe used to.

The actual enemies aren't too hard to defeat but the bosses are quite difficult (I spent like 4 hours on Death trying to kill him and that is the only boss I can remember off the top of my head who was really hard). I mean the bosses are pretty decently hard. Konami has answered our prayers and made much harder bosses this time around than they did in some of the more recent portable outings. This game also takes a new approach than the other Metroidvania titles like Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow continued to do. As good as every “Metroidvania” has been (meaning metroid style exploration with classic Castlevania platforming elements with RPG elements blended) it started to get a bit stale. Dawn of Sorrow was an amazing DS game but everything felt so much like the previous titles that it was like “ok when is IGA (Kojima Igrarashi, series producer and main man since 97) going to change it a bit, the game is great but its kind of “samey”. In this game it took a new approach with the level design.

Instead of just 1 huge castle that has all the same environments in every single new metroidvania title that's released like your usual Clock Tower, Wizard lab, catacombs and cathedrals which have been done a little too much since 1997 since Symphony came out they took an entire new approach. You still have your usual castle but it's not quite as big as the other ones. Its probably only 3/5ths maybe even a half the size of the castle from Dawn of Sorrow or Symphony was except the castle works as a sort of “hub” to other worlds. The Portrait of Ruin part of the title is the main kicker. In the game you have 4 different paintings that you can travel through to new separate worlds. Think Mario 64 except that's kind of what its like except in 2D.

Definitely homage to Bloodlines since Bloodlines had you traveling the European countryside till you finally made it to the final castle and those levels were memorable cause of their “variety”. You have a fun house type level and some other really neat ones as well that I don't want to give away. The 4 portrait you go to aren't very long and the castle and the 1st ending can be obtained within 5 hours or so and you will be very disappointed by doing just that plus the ending I a little bit lame. However, if you are like me and want to get the “best ending” and experience everything in the game you can work past the “final boss” battle and do it in a certain special way to move further on in the game.

Then you basically get to explore more of the castle and the 4 portrait you discovered earlier will now be “twisted” around and have a whole new look and feel to them along with new enemies and boss battles. Its like the upside down castle from Symphony of the Night except designed and done over much better since SOTN as classic and as amazing that game is the upside down part could've been done a bit better in my opinion. There are tons of weapons, spells, special effects and “Dual Crashes” which involve both characters. Its an amazing game from start to finish and you won't be disappointed if you have played any recent Castlevania since 1997 (excluding 64 releases).

GRAPHICS 10/10: The graphics in this game are nothing but short of amazing. Now some people just don't understand mostly gamers that grew up on the “3D gaming era” about 2D graphics. They can't appreciate them for what they are nor can they accept 2D games in a 3D gaming market. Now listen up all you kiddies out there, w/o 2D gaming your 3D wouldn't be here and most 2D games are much easier to understand than a 3D game mostly because it doesn't require as much controls and as much work to actually pull off. People including non-gamers have always been able to at least understand how to play a 2D game. Now another debate is “3D is better looking than 2D” now this is not necessarily so. Sure some 3D games are real works of art but just because a game is “3D” doesn't make it a good game. Castlevania is a prime example of 2D being a pure true art form. The designers at Konami are very skilled with programming, graphic and level design and inspiring a lot of vibe and a lot detail like painting an epic portrait into their games. They make great games and they have been since 1987 with the Castlevania series. They seem to always push w/e system they are using to its very limits when it comes to graphics or game play and do this quite often even though they make mostly 2D games. This games graphics are probably as good as Symphony of the Night I would actually say a little bit better. Animation is very smooth and effective, theirs 3D polygon backgrounds and your liberal use of the 3D or pre-rendered special effects and detail in areas. It's used somewhat liberally but the game does stick with 2D game play, which is good because most 3D CV games I have played totally sucked even the more ambitious recent titles fell flat. Graphics are as good of 2D graphics as you will ever see. Some complain that the environments in the game are somewhat “copy pasted” and even though this is true with ALL Castlevania titles this doesn't detract or make the game less enjoyable or not as fun to look at. The environments are different looking and have variety which and it's the first CV in along time to allow you to explore outside the castle. Graphically it's as good as CV: Dawn of Sorrow and in some ways even surpasses that game.

SOUND 10/10: What can I say Michiru Yamane is an amazing composer. She has done all the work from Castlevania Bloodlines on up. She composed most the tracks for this game even though legendary music composer Yuzo Koshiro lent some of his own tracks to the soundtrack as well. Two legendary composers on 1 soundtrack? Can't go bad with that. The music style is got a ton of variety in it from really haunting, dark melodies, to upbeat melodies and songs to nice fast paced music. Also your occasional remixes like “Simon's Theme”, “Iron Blue Intention” and “Crucifix Held Close” are in this game and sound awesome. The soundtrack is amazing and every song fits every level perfectly and its one of the best soundtracks I have heard in a CV game since Symphony of the Night. Music is outstanding. There's also quite a lot of actual sound clips and voice acting in the game with the option of unlocking the Japanese voice-overs via a secret code if you for some reason don't want the American voice acting. There's like over 300 and something sound clips and pieces of speech from the enemies and characters. The games audio is actually better than Dawn of Sorrow's and beats it in all categories with higher quality sound and sound samples than Dawn of Sorrow. Sound Effects are mostly your standard Castlevania effects we have heard for the past 20 years and they get the job done better than most, still great as always. Sound is as perfect as you could make it.

RE-PLAYABILITY 10/10: This game scores in spades in this department. Most other Metroidvania titles offer some sort of “alternative mode” allowing you to play as other characters. This game lets you play up to a whopping 7 characters in unlockable modes you get by getting the best ending and beating the game. It also has a hard mode that also allows you to use a “level cap” to make it where you can't gain levels or can only gain levels up to a certain level so you can make the game as hard as you want once you beat it. The game is very re-playable and the characters you can unlock are interesting and have different moves and abilities. There's also Nintendo Wifi which is kind of limited or an after thought but its still nice they decided to do some sort of multi-player even if its not the greatest in the world. You have Nintendo wifi co-op battles where you race against friends or random wifi users to the end of special courses defeating enemies. Very basic but fun if you got a reason to kill a little bit of time. There's also a shop mode to sell useless stuff for cash that you don't want or to raise your funds over Nintendo Wifi. Again a good little diversion but since most the equipment you will probably find in the game your first play through its not entirely worth your time unless you just don't want to go and get some enemy to drop an item you want for some odd reason. Its nice Konami put these on there I am just saying its nothing revolutionary but it's the first CV to ever incorporate any online modes of play. Re-playability is very high in this game and IGA did a great job on giving fans more than just 1 playing mode and gave us enough to keep us busy for awhile even though the alternate modes are plot less from what I can tell.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION: Definitely buy this game if you are a Castlevania fan or want a good 2D action adventure sidescroller. This game is amazing and does almost everything right. There might be a few little imperfections or something you could gripe about but it's so hard to actually find anything wrong with it deserves a 10/10 and I am not even being generous. This is one of the best DS games that have been released as of me writing this review. Its just amazing how well made it is and if you love Castlevania and played Dawn of Sorrow you should love this game. Or if you played Bloodlines from the Genesis more years ago and wished for a sequel that was lengthier and more advanced Castlevania title, don't look any further cause this is it. A true masterpiece and like its predecessor from the Genesis, will probably go under appreciated just like Bloodlines has all these years but remains one of the top Genesis titles of all time.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/07