Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin - Act II

 

Next I wade through my favorite of the painting zones, the desert, fighting off Shishio cosplayers.

R.I.P. Gene "The Fuck" Hackman

It isn't a boss, but I gotta say, the skeletal dragons in here are super impressive.

Brauner appears! He's basically a poor man's Dracula. Get outta here, Brauner!

He has these two hot vampire daughters. The trio of them could probably destroy our heroes right now, but instead they do the villain thing and take off to let us get more powerful so later we can defeat them all one at a time.

The boss of the desert zone is this vile jezebel. She's one of the toughest bosses in the game. There's one big reason for this:

She makes like the Romancing Saga 2 final boss and charms Jonathan, who then proceeds to BEAT DOWN CHARLOTTE.

So the obvious solution here is to just play Charlotte for the fight and not even summon Jonathan out. This is where that Skeletal Gunner attack is super-useful, because it absolutely shreds this boss.

I didn't do this in my playthrough, but apparently if you manage to defeat the boss with Charlotte while Jonathan is charmed, there's a scene after the fight where Jonathan apologizes for getting charmed and Charlotte points out that she too is sexy.

Sexy, yes. Charming? Ehhhh.

Next up is one of the Bella Twits.

Both characters are back out for this fight, and surprisingly, she doesn't charm.

After chasing her off, she drops this brooch. It has the Bella Twits... and Wind? What is the meaning of this? Did Wind have a three-way with Brauner's daughters? Is that what caused this entire debacle? What a scandal!

Wind has some splaining to do!

"Did you really have a bone-sesh with Brauner's daughters?"

"DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT take those ladies to pound town??"

Dun dun DUN! Well, we already knew this. It's a big revelation though...for folks who remembered Castlevania Bloodlines.

Does this mean Eric is sort of Jonathan's Piccolo?

Charlotte: "Back to the question about pound town! Answer the question! Bone sesh or no sesh?"

::brakes screeching, cats meowing::

So basically, Brauner lost his daughters in WW1. Eric Lecarde here showed up at the castle to slay Brauner, since Brauner's an evil vampire, and lost the fight. Then his daughters came looking for him, only to get captured by Brauner and turned into vampires who now follow him. Lecarde's ghost has been hovering around the castle haunting all of them ever since.

He speaks of the final great battle with Dracula, in 1999, where the Belmonts will need to take up the Vampire Killer one last time.

Boy, they're really building up this Julius Belmont 1999 game that we never got. You'd think it was the planned third/final DS game, that would have made perfect sense. The last THREE games all built towards it.

The next pocket dimension is this bizarre ruined city. It's actually possible to do this before the desert zone, which doesn't really change anything.

This area is shaped like a wheel, and involves getting to the top of the wheel and going south to the center area. It's confusing because the doors are often hard to tell apart from the rest of the environment here.

The next boss is... a legion of naked men?

...well, yeah, it's Legion, one of the weirdest bosses in the Igavanias. It's a fun boss because it's an opportunity to unleash any AOEs you have and see how many small men you can knock off from the giant ball of men.

This next part is a tricky puzzle where both characters have to zip down a hall on scooters, with the player switching between them with X to dodge obstacles. It's a pretty unique usage of the dual-character mechanic, but it's also kinda rough, so it's good that this particular puzzle only shows up once.

The next painting world is this forest, and yet again, these portrait zones have amazing backgrounds.

This zone is full of earth-element foes, and mostly occurs inside of this temple. One of the things I like about this game is how straightforward most of the painting zones are. Not a lot of getting lost in this game, unlike most of the other Igavanias. I like that about it. Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission do the same thing which might be why I go back to those way more often than any of the other Metroid games (aside from Super of course).

"I am not a tree! I am an Ent!"

Getting a lot of mileage out of the Long Spear and the reach it has.

An important thing to get here is the Rose Stem Whip, dropped by these plants. It isn't as damaging as the spear I've been using, but it's the strongest whip so far, and strikes so fast that it's worth using until I get Jonathan's ultimate whip.

If one doesn't get it to drop here, no problem, the game gives you one just laying around in the Clock Tower in a bit.

After going up lots of stairs, I arrive at the freakish zone boss:

This giant amphibious version of John Carpenter's The Thing. What am I even looking at here?

The weak point is this top frog, which means swimming up and wailing on it. There's a big water cannon attack that this thing uses that can legit one-shot you if you get caught in the barrage for long, and swimming above the boss seems to avoid it. It's also weak to Holy Lightning, so using the invulnerability from that can also work for avoiding attacks.

This gets Charlotte the power to transform into a frog and fit into Morph Ball sized tunnels, which unlocks more of the map.

Next up is the Clock Tower, perennial home of Death and a general nightmarish place for long-time 'Vania fans. They spared no expense with inundating you with Medusa Heads here.

The latest and toughest of the giant guards is Final Guard, which seems to take 1 damage from everything. In previous Igavanias, this thing usually has the best drops in any given game. Here, not so much. It drops "Defensive Form" which is an activatable defense raise / attack lowering ability that I never use.

They're good EXP at least. There's a "1000 Blades" attack found in Sandy Grave that does a ton of hits for 1 damage each and it's actually useful for taking these down.

It's like this giant knight realized that it could make armor out of whatever Metal Babbles are made out of, and went all the way with it.

Next is one of the game's four particularly hard fights. This time Death isn't just going to take off.

Death has two forms he switches between. Confederate grey-coat Death takes extra damage from physical attacks, while Union blue-coat Death takes extra damage from spells. This means it's a good idea to switch between the two characters as needed. His attacks are generally super-hard to dodge, like the giant scythe that bounces around the screen.

This is the first fight in the game where I had to use Potions to win, and I had to burn through ALL NINE of the ones I was carrying, plus two High Potions. Gonna have to hit the merchant after this and spend some money. Luckily potions are pretty much the only thing you need to spend money on (besides Castle Maps).

Jonathan talks big after Death already left!

Next is a big boss fight: Both of Brauner's daughters.

They're hot!

One of the toughest fights in the game by a mile, and another of the big four hardest. Except you don't actually have to do the fight (and aren't supposed to).

It's a fun battle, and worth doing once. I'm a big fan of Holy Lightning, just wish it were more viable on these lategame fights (it uses too much stamina).

The fight is particularly brutal because of these massive ice shard attacks they do. Huge blocks of ice crash onto the screen and break apart into equally-dangerous medium-sized shards.

Win, and the castle crumbles. That's it for this game.

...well, this is technically the "bad ending" of the game. Brauner escapes, Jonathan never awakens the true power of the Vampire Killer, and Charlotte spends the next few weeks hopping around spastically somewhere in toad form.

Getting the good ending requires a lot more work, which has been the case with the last few Igavanias so it's a tradition.

To get the good ending, I need a spell from the basement of the desert zone. I'm just glad to have a reason to revisit this place. In the southeast part of the zone, I use Toad Morph to get...

This, the spell that has to be used on the Bella Twits to cure them. Not sure how anybody was supposed to figure this out. It looks like some sort of anti-poison spell.

Fight the Twits again and use Sanctuary (it takes a while to cast so you need to put Charlotte on it while Jonathan distracts the bosses), and it instantly ends the fight. The problem is that if Charlotte gets hit while channeling, the cast is broken. You can't just park her in the corner and lure them to the other side of the room either, because leaving the screen she's on will also break the channeling. So you basically have to stand near her and feverishly whip ice shards out of the air so they don't break her cast.

Once that ordeal is done, the sisters are cured of vampirism and regain their senses! Now they're willing to help Jonathan strengthen his whip. Homina. Well, no, powering up the whip means a fight to the death with...

...the illusion of Richter Belmont, complete with all of his sub-weapons. Charlotte is left at the door for this one, it's strictly one-on-one. The way the map and status screens get turned off for this fight shows what serious business it is.

THIS is the actual toughest fight in the game, and every other fight pales in comparison. It's a fast and furious clash, and the only trick to winning is to bring lots of heals. Richter has so many HP that the fight just goes on and ON even if you play it super well. Since you have to employ a hit-and-run strategy, the Long Spear is a good thing to use here. Striking and then retreating is the only way to outgun him.

They went so overboard on his HP that the fight actually wades into the level of tediousness after a while. At least it's a pretty damn bad-ass fight and a passing of the torch of sorts where Jonathan Morris gets a win over a Belmont. So who is the fourth of the big four tough fights? The final boss of course. I think Richter here takes the top spot, which isn't surprising because Belmont Duel fights like this are usually worse than the final bosses of these games.

Ya know, they really phased out the Belmonts in the Igavanias. Matter of fact, of the seven main Igavanias, only ONE of them even has a Belmont as a main character: Harmony of Dissonance, with Juste Belmont (who looks more like a vampire than most of the vampires do). Never really thought about it before, but it seems the Belmonts were shunted to the side.

After Jonathan Morris finally proves himself as a legit 'Vania protagonist by whipping a Belmont, it awakens the true power of the starting whip and makes it now the best weapon.

It's a significant attack upgrade. Plenty of other weapons have higher base attack, but this one strikes fast and has a nice range on it, making it the best option. I'm just glad that all the weapon upgrades aren't locked behind farming enemy souls in this one.

This leads to the final part of the game... though really, the "good ending" adds another half to the game, because we've got a few more portrait zones to go through via this "stage select" type room next to the sisters.

First up is popping into Dark Academy and getting Charlotte's next morph, the power of flight.

With this, Charlotte can pretty much go anywhere on the map, as well as now being really good at hunting field mice.

Now armed with the uber-whip, our heroes go for the best ending and take on the last few paintings. So how am I liking this game? It's good, real good. The paintings really set it apart and make it interesting, and both main characters are a lot of fun to play as. Just an A+ game here and as of right now, if anyone were to just play one game on the Dominus Collection, this is the one I'd recommend.

Other Castlevania Posts