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About Me
About Me

Well, not too sure what to say really. I'm 21 years old, been gaming for almost as long as I can remember. My first game system was a Sega Genesis and I was completely obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. Still am, despite his lack of good games nowadays.

I'm in college, just finished my junior year now. (YAY!) I'm an English Major, hoping to be a writer someday, no matter how lofty a goal that may be. I'm working on some books actually, most of them fantasy-style, but I'm also dabbling in the more realistic too.

Other than that, there's not much else to say. I know I make a lot of typos, I probably made a bunch up there as well. But yeah, hope to meet some cool people here and have some good times gaming.

PSN Name

Ryoma90 (Feel free to add me.)

Game Consoles

Playstation 3
Wii
Xbox 360
Playstation 2
Dreamcast
DS
PSP

Favorite Game

Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast. It was my first RPG, I fell in love with it. I was kinda late on the RPG Bandwagon, but better late than never I suppose.

Currently Playing

Mirror's Edge
Tales of Vesperia
Final Fantasy IV Complete Collection
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Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Review
Ryoma90 | 12:17 PM on 06.13.2009 15 comments


You may wonder why, with games like Infamous and Punch-Out, I would be playing a DS game, an older DS game, in a series like Castlevania. With such high-profile, incredibly exciting titles on the more advanced systems, why would I play an old-style 2D platformer? Because gamefly didn't have anything more interesting to send. :P

In all seriousness, I've never played a Castlevania game before. Never. This was my first foray into the realm of Dracula-slaying. So, this review is not from someone who knows Belmonts from whoever else, this is the review from someone who never picked up a Castlevania game before, didn't know anything about the series. I added it to my gamefly as an afterthought, surprised to find it in my mailbox.

But, holy crap, what the hell have I been missing out on?


I know it's not the official NA box, but I like this one more. :D

Castlevania begins with Dracula's castle rising out of the ground for some reason, and two people, Charlotte and Jonathon are apparently the only two that can do something about it. Who are they? Why are they in the Castle? What makes them so special? Well, the game kind of explains this, but the story isn't really that interesting. Jonathon is a member of a family that isn't Belmont, but knows the Belmonts, and he has the Vampire Killer for some reason but can't use it...or something. I don't really know, the cutscenes were very brief and uninformative. But, what was there was fairly smartly written and at times humorous, which I found surprising.

Needless to say, it's the gameplay that really drives the game. At first, I was kind of disappointed with the gameplay. You don't really have any fighting combos, you just kinda hit a button for one strike. And you jump. Charlotte has magic, Jon has weapons, and you can switch. That's about it, at first. But then, I got more stuff, could perform more actions, and gameplay took off.

This was helped immensely by the awesome music. I had no idea Castlevania's tunes were so dang catchy. I found myself humming the songs long after turning off the DS, something that -very- rarely happens. I started searching for the soundtracks, and everything. It's great.



Graphics in the game are 2D, but very nicely done and well animated. The smoothness of the sprite's animation varies depending on the character, but for the most part, they are very fluid. Monsters are all beautifully rendered in a great art style. The character portraits are generic anime, but the actual monsters you fight are far more original.

Speaking of monsters, Castlevania has really awesome boss battles. They followed a kind of formula, at least I found. You would fight, die twice, on the third attempt get the hang of it, and win on your fourth. Otherwise, the game isn't really overly difficult, but not exactly easy either. It was the perfect difficulty, just challenging enough to keep things interesting.

I do have some complaints. There has to be a better way to switch specials then pausing the game each time, and going through the menus. It's tedious, and more than a few times in epic boss battles I would think I had one special equipped only to have a different one. Also, the two-character idea isn't very useful. I played most of the game as Jon, and switched to Charlotte in very specific circumstances.

But that's all nitpicky stuff. Overall, Casltevania is one of the most fun games I've played in a while. I'm definitely a fan, and now I'm going to search out the others. :D



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13 comments | showing # 1 to 13
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Zantetsuken's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 13:21
Zantetsuken
Games are never too old to enjoy. Unless they are really crap.

This one reminds me of the old SNES one, and that's definitely a good thing.
CWal37's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:05
CWal37
Love Portait, it's a great game. Never did quite 100% it though. Should really go back and finish that.
Passionate Styos's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:13
Passionate Styos
Now go and play Symphony of the Night, damn it!
BulletMagnet's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:28
BulletMagnet
I just played through this one recently myself - despite the fact that it's commonly considered the least good of the DS 'vanias, I'm half-tempted to say that I enjoyed it more than Dawn of Sorrow, the common favorite. You're right in saying that the characters weren't quite balanced enough to justify using equally, and the re-using of earlier areas near the end is groan-worthy (and don't get me started on "mastering" Jon's weapons), but on the whole I thought that the overall experience flowed pretty nicely. Definitely try the rest of the series, most of them are pretty darn good.
Kyousuke Nanbu's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:41
Kyousuke Nanbu
You master John's weapons pretty easily in certain areas, then there's the money glitch.

I got 1,000% in this, good game, shame the ending doesn't change if you get everything.
Discarded Couch Sandwich's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:45
Discarded Couch Sandwich
I'd have reccomended Aria of Sorrow if I hadn't already seen it in your profile. The new 2D Castlevania games are some of the finest adventure/platformers that are still being made. After falling in love with Dawn of Sorrow about three years back (and completing that one with everything, 100%) I went to hunt out the rest myself.

The double pack with Aria and Harmony was one of the best purchases I've made, and seals my opinion on the Game Boy Advance being the most tragic console to lose in the last few years. Symphony is easy enough to get a hold of these days, either on PSP or XBLA (and PSN in America). I would highly reccomend any of them: they may be more of the same, but I'd enjoy playing them much more than most shiny home-console games!

I still need to get Order of Ecclesia, just waiting for it to come cheaper than £30 at the minute...
Ashley Davis's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:50
Ashley Davis
I'm surprised there was no mention of the same levels being repeated twice.. that's everyone's biggest complaint about PoR, but it never bothered me too much. Glad to see I'm not the only one who can see past that. :)

Dawn of Sorrow is my favorite DS Castlevania so far (haven't played Order of Ecclesia yet), but I do really enjoy Portrait of Ruin as well. I played the opposite as you; I started out only using Charlotte (her spells are too damn useful), but I found that the closer I got to the end of the game, the more I started to use Jonathan. The end portions seem more tailored to his abilities.
DF's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 14:55
DF
Charlotte is this game's hard mode (outside of Hard Mode). She has some pretty nifty attacks but almost all of them require her to stand still and can't be done in the air, which is pretty bad.

Everyone Pies Whip's Memory. *shot*

@DCS: You'll love OoE. It has a lot of small stages, and weapons actually matter matter unlike in the recent CVs where you can just brute-force everything to death. And the bosses are notoriously hard, so you also can't just outlast bosses like in past games.
FalconReaper's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 15:37
FalconReaper
I actually understand where you are coming from with this. OoE wasn't the first game in the series I played but it was the only one I didn't stop playing out of frustration and got me hooked on the series. Also, nice review.

@Ashley Davis
You should play Order of Ecclesia its a lot of fun and the bosses are hard in a good way except Dracula and those fucking bats of his.
Shin Oni's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 18:46
Shin Oni
PoR isn't a bad Castlevania game to start off with. But when you go play all the other DS games, Symphony of the Night, and the classic SNES version, you'll see PoR was rather "meh" in the handheld castlevania life.

As Ashley said, biggest problem is going through the stages 2 times...in a sense. With just newer monsters. Kudos to Konami for trying the dual partner bit but it really wasn't all that great. Go pick up Order of Ecclesia as it's a nice blend of old school straightforward Castlevania with the new School Symphony of the Night feel.

and don't worry. All PoR boxart is awful. Saturday morning Anime FTW.
lovemana23's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 19:52
lovemana23
Yes! Nice to see someone realising dis shit is good! You are going to be overjoyed by Symphony of the Night (just wait `till you hear the soundtrack), and i`d personally recommend Aria of Sorrow on GBA and Order of Ecclesia as the other two stone-cold classics on recent systems, though opinions vary. Portrait was the game that got me back into 2D `vanias, and I since chased up all the GBA titles, SON etc. But, unlike many people, I didn`t dig Dawn of Sorrow as much as Portrait of Ruin - the game world in DOS seems so 1 dimensional compared to POR`s expansive, world hopping stages. There all sweet though, and Ecclesia is SO satisfying to beat, being as it is quite friggin tough, though gloriously so - such a perfect difficulty curve in it, and it treats you well for a while before handing you your ass again and waking you up.......and the music is just sublime. I just excreted love juices for all recent 2D castlevanias. Haven`t got round to the 8bit incarnations yet....
grafkhun's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/13/2009 22:20
grafkhun
As a huge fan of the 'SOTN and beyond' CV games, I'm glad to see another gamer get into them. However, if you liked Portrait of Ruin, you'll love the others. PoR was the weakest of the most recent CV games and it's the last one I'd recomend, still a great and enjoyable game, especially the music, but I felt the others were better. I have yet to play Dawn of Sorrow, and I haven't completed Circle of the Moon yet, but go with any of the other CV games and you'll have fun.
Ryoma90's Avatar - Comment posted on 06/14/2009 14:33
Ryoma90
@DISCARDED COUCH SANDWICH: Hehe, I actually need to change that. I got the double pack, and started Harmony instead of Aria. I didn't realize until after the fact. I fail. :P But I'm enjoying it immensely just the same. :)

@ASHLEY DAVIS: I actually forgot about that part when I typed the review. To be honest, it -really- didn't bother me. Those levels had new music, and were different enough for me to still enjoy. :) And yeah, charlotte's spells are great, if you can pul them off, which can be hard. D:

@SHIN ONI: I don't mean to be dumb here, but are you talking about Super Castlevania IV? Cuz, there's two SNES ones...:/ Dracula X's playable character was in PoR...so...

Also, I keep hearing so many good things about Symphony of the Night, I will make sure to get this off my PS3 soon. :D
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