Wii-Tards.net : We Never Finish Anyth

Finally finished the game.

Konami’s Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is a great new installment in the famous Castlevania series, following the metroid-like footsteps of Symphony of the Night. The game is packed with lots to do, things to get, enemies to fight, having alot more features and lacking the gimmicks. (touchscreen, blegh).

Dang. Bad case of ass-fungus there.

The basic gist is that yer not a Belmont, but a Morris, as yer playing Jonathan, vampire killer, son of John Morris (yeah, that texan guy from CV: Bloodlines on the Smegadrive) and Charlotte, powerful magician with a weird boring haircut. The storyline is heavily based on Bloodlines, so for those who played it before, alot of familiar faces will pop up. Yep, the castle is back again, so some dude with a whip gotta go and destroy Count Dracula once more. Except not, as some psycho who paints dimensional portals called Brauner is up to no good, and has his daughters to annoy the main characters. The game’s dialog has a bit more characterization and life then CV: Dawn of Sorrow, as the characters this time actually do have some kind of background and clear goal. The voice acting, whatever there is of it, is english, and might be jarring for the traditional japanophile, but they are great for DS standards, I personally prefer the english speech (For you that love japanese gibberish, hold L and A while pressing start at the menu screen for Jon and Charly to speak japanese. “Itsu Sho Timu!” . The story, while not supertastic, is eons ahead of Dawn of Sorrow.

The gameplay got a kick in the butt too, mainly the fact that you are controlling two characters at all times. You can either switch between them or play with them both. HP is the same for both chracters when you switch, but MP gets chipped off when yer playing with yer partner out. This Duo system can bring in alot of strategy and can solve certain puzzles. You can also use your partner’s skill or magic if he’s/she’s hidden away.

Instead of Soma Cruz’s soul-system, we get the familar attacks and summons split up into two categories: Skills and Spells. Jonathan being the more physical of the both tend to use Skills for throwing weapons like Knives and Shurikens, but also defensive or offensive poses for the respective stats. One of my favorite (and incredibly necessary) skills was the Stonewall skill, which raises Jonnnyboy’s defence raiting ridiculously high while keeping you stationary, allowing you to block alot of attacks, or at least get damaged alot less then normally, also defending Charlotte in the process. Charlotte in turn gets the spells, and these can be either generic(Raise a certain stat for yourself or Jonathan) or like fantastic summoning spells. (Summon a certain salamander dragon from the Gradius series!) While some can be found laying around, most skills and spells have to be smacked out of enemies like in Soma’s games, so there’s still the element of genociding monsters to get their items. This won’t be a problem for the hardy completists.

Thus, a new idea for a Hentai Doujin is born.

The characters can equip themselves with a nice catelogue of varied armor, clothing and accessories, having a range from handy to goofy, like in Symphony of the Night. (invisible cape? What? Why?) Since you have two characters to equip, there’s alot more to find and collect. Jonathan, while initially equipped with a whip, will find it handy to switch over to other staples in the Castlevania armament, like swords and gloves, but I found I was playing with the whips more (there’s more variants to collect). Charlotte amusingly equips books about weapons, which magically appear out of them when she attacks.

Maps in Metroid-Vania types were always pretty large, (Circle of the Moon still has to be topped, though.) but PoR seemed to initally have a smaller map. This is because most of the game has been spread out in smaller sub maps. These can be accessed by the title’s Portraits, so that the castle acts as a hub to these levels. They are traversed in the same fashion as the main map, but the theme can be even more weird and varied then normally as a contained room or area in a castle. We’re talking about forests, apocalyptic KISS Circus like cities, a 19th century shopping area and subway station and my favorite, a desert pyramid, complete with mummies.

“Dammit, woman, I’m busy axing stuff. Just..tug at their
bandages or something, that always works on TV.”

Difficulty also got bumped up in PoR. Dawn of Sorrow and Aria of Sorrow were nice platform romps, but the difficulty wasn’t really implied. PoR will be a bit of a shocker to seasoned players who think the series has mellowed out. There’s a problem tho about abusing certain skills and attacks, but some of these follow the megaman procedure: Find out about a certain weakness or item combination that works on a enemy and boss best, some of these can be surprisingly diverse and humorous. Then there’s the use of fricking 1000 knives. This Dual move will let Jonathan throw a flurry of knives ahead of him. Using these repeatedly, as it doesn’t use much MP, will win you a bevy of Boss fights.

The game is alot more rewarding then Dawn of Sorrow was, making DoS seem more like a hasty rush job to make sure there was a Castlevania game at the DS’s launch. While not a bad game at all, it isn’t as featured and jampacked with stuff to do as in PoR. If there’s some gripes about PoR, there’s the fact that not long after getting a few partner skills, the partner system tends to get almost useless. I have found out I am either forcing Charlotte out because…I can, or hiding her in my pocket just to save up MP, as Jonathan can fend himself just fine. Haven’t found it handy to switch to her exclusivly. There are instances that you need Charlotte for her Summoning or spell casting, but these hold for special events or certain bosses. Still creative, but dissepointing.

While the game might seem huge with all the different sub areas, they are themselves not really that interesting. The City of Fools area for instance is mapped in a repetitive way, and traversing it can get boring. The Pyramid is more insteresting, but you can sense that the Portrait hub idea wasn’t really fleshed out as it should be. Still tho. There’s alot more to explore then the previous games, and the secrets are alot more interesting too. There’s a piano in a room for instance…what to do?

Quests are a not really new to Castelvania, but they are more pronounced in PoR, as there’s a special character available called Wind to actually hand these out to you. Still though, they are sometimes as vague as Hammer’s stupid news paper in Dawn of Sorrow, merely hinting you to “Get jewel from under some statue somewhere”. While it isn’t as bad as a ‘Graveyard Duck’, it’s a bit more interesting then just wacking alot more hidden walls around the game for a pie or something.

There’s also the recycling of certain aspects. Jon kinda walks like Soma, so I keep thinking he’s a sprite recolor..his range and fluidity of animations are alot bigger then Soma’s though. Charlotte is nicely animated, but ya can see they were giving Jonathan alot more attention. Enemies and bosses has also been reused, but we should be used to this by now. The main gameplay (walking around leveling and hurting monsters) is still the same, but some fun can be gotten with combining Charlotte’s and Jonathan’s attacks.

“Jon. I think you might have overdid that shock-buzzer joke…
and no, it’s STILL not funny.”

The sound is the greatest of the handheld series. Although tastes may differ, it is certain that the quality is high, and most of the tunes are fun to listen to, some of them of the ‘humming while going to work’ kind..mainly because most of them are also rather short and repeating. Not to an annoying level, but it’s there to be noticed. Also, lacking another rendition of the song ‘Vampire Killer’ is a plus. Love the tune, but not to death, Konami! The voicebytes are also awesome, as afformentioned. They also seemed to do some effort as the voices actually do sound like a Jonathan or a Charlotte. Yes, even the Succibi are english now. Enjoy.

Finishing the game reaps you the usual hidden Characters. Not 1 or two but 5! Ofcourse, most of these are paired up like with Jon and Charlotte, but it’s quite a replay value. Especially the game involging the afformenioned sisters is quite a difference, involving moving with the +Control Pad, and fighting with the stylus. Greatly implemented and fun, and maybe a good idea for future Castlevania’s.. Hard modes are now officially…hard. Instead of simply turning up the damage afflicted by enemies, you can also choose at what level you are capped. The hardest setting is to cap your level at 1, making the game EXTREMELY though. Have fun doing -1- damage at the later bosses.

Lastly, there’s the WiFi capabilies. No, we’re not (yet) talking about a MMORPG Castlevania, sadly. PoR features two modes: Shop Mode and Coop mode. These can be done for ranged gameplay or over the internet. Shop Mode involves selling your items online. You cannot set up the prices, which is kinda lame, but maybe understandable, as people can abuse this easily. Also, what you sell will gain you the gold, but it won’t remove the item from your inventory. This enables noobies to gain some weapons or armor early, or some quest items for Wind, which can make it easier. but as the prices are set, and sometimes very high, new games fresh from the box cannot buy alot immediatly.

Coop play is alot more interesting. The game is essentially online Boss Rush, a favorite among Castlevania fans. Your capabilities and equipment are based on the savegame you choose, but your level is capped at 50, for fair play. Players can choose between Jonathan or Charlotte, going trough a gauntlet of bosses of increasingly difficulty. It’s a shame though, that while the a local game let’s you choose between 3 courses, there’s only one Online course, and it’s not very long either. Still, it’s great if you want a quick multiplay whipping. Winning these will reap you with a prize to use in the savegame you chose to play with.

Our heroes can be quite pushy when they miss the train.

All in all, I was wonderfully entertained with this game. There’s alot of meat in the game, despite the shortcomings, especially if your a Castlevania fan. The repetition is starting to show trough though, so let’s hope the next Castlevania DS will be significantly different..altho I know alot of people won’t agree with that.

Score: out of five Creampie subweapons.

Mark Vega