Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Nintendo DS, 2006)

 

In my continuing quest to figure out what the best of the big eight Iga-Metroidvanias is (the six portables, plus Symphony and Bloodstained), I've got two left and this is one of 'em. It's definitely a major contender. And I'll say this, Circle of the Moon isn't going to win, probably because it's the Iga-Metroidvania that doesn't even contain Iga.

Regardless, this game is freaking fantastic, and is a direct sequel to Castlevania Bloodlines.

As far as the portable Igavanias go, this one right here might be my favorite. It gets super creative with a Mario 64 style of world design where you go to a variety of independent levels via paintings. This allows the game to have much more diverse environments than the usual "Dracula's Castle" and "Area Around Dracula's Castle".

The tradeoff is that the castle itself is kind of small in this version, about half the size it usually is. Not to worry, all of the painting levels make up for it. They're particularly fun to traverse because it's tough to get lost, and they feel more like traditional 'Vania levels.

While Bloodlines took place during WW1, this direct sequel takes place during WW2.

Our main character is Jonathan Morris, son of John Morris from Bloodlines. He might have inherited the Belmont whip, but he still isn't a Belmont, and doesn't really know how to use it. Ingame he can swing it just fine, but it doesn't do much damage.

Fun Fact: Having just recently rewatched the movie, John Morris was also the name of the music composer for Young Frankenstein, which is...probably a coincidence.

This is basically his whole character arc: He feels weird about not being able to live up to the Belmonts, as he's just an imitation vampire hunter. So right away they're neutering one of the two main characters, but it's a safe guess that by the end he'll master the whip.

Oh yeah, Charlotte is also here, a sorceress who puts Jonathan down all the time.

She rocks thigh-high socks and is mostly here for the view. She's in the Maria Renard / Sypha school of magic, with elemental spells and weird summons. In short, she's the interesting character who gets all kinds of varied abilities, while Jonathan is the traditional 'Vania whipmaster.

For the most part I'm gonna stick to playing as Jonathan for this run. It's pretty cool that the whip is being re-emphasized for the first time in several games, but you're also getting the best of both worlds because there's a full variety of other weapons to use too.

Charlotte uses books as weapons, which means short range and not a lot of damage (she isn't John Wick). For the most part you want to get spells equipped on her and keep a bit of a distance on foes.

HUGE positive over Dawn of Sorrow: You can actually fullscreen (sort of) the map now and see where you're going. Hugely helpful change here that instantly makes this more playable than the previous game on Dominus Collection, especially on a portable mode Switch.

The save statues are sexier than usual, with their midriffs. Both characters gain levels at the same time, so you don't have to worry about one character falling behind if you're mostly playing the other.

Our heroes push a significantly less sexy statue around. For particularly heavy objects, you can direct both characters to push. In this case I needed to reach higher ground, so I had Charlotte ride the statue while Jonathan pushed it.

One of the first Metroid-like traversal abilities here is the power to spring off of your partner's head to do a higher jump. The big gimmick of this game is using two characters you can switch control between, and they have fun with it without ever making it any sort of annoyance. You can play as one or the other 90% of the time without issue, and even make the inactive character poof from the screen for a bit if you want less busy-ness on the screen.

If playing as Jonathan, the most important thing early on is to farm the Axe. This requires killing lots of Axe Armors near the beginning (which also gets you several levels). It's sorta like farming a Brass Shield from the troops near the beginning of Elden Ring. You just do it and it makes your life 3x easier.

In the case of the Axe, this is the normal arc-ing subweapon from the rest of the series, but it can land multiple hits as it travels through larger foes, and is invaluable in this game. I'm used to using it, so I doubt I'll even really use any other subweapons.

The weapon variety for Jonathan is already showing, as I find a big ol' two-handed sword. You can go around and unga-bunga this game and do pretty well, but I prefer the whips if at all possible. The starting whip is the weakest weapon, unfortunately, so I'm at the mercy of finding better whips that are good enough to use at any given point over my other weapons.

This ghost dude, Wind, is basically the quest hub of the game. He also makes sure to let us know that Jonathan is a dumbass and not at all smart like Charlotte is! Something Charlotte and every other character also tell us, while Jonathan stands there wondering what the fuck everyone's issue is.

It is revealed much later on that Wind here is actually ::drumroll:: Eric Lecarde from Castlevania Bloodlines. His spirit lurks here to try and help John Morris' son out of regret for not doing more for John. I don't know, in my version of events he beat the game so I'd say he did a lot for John.

"You must do my tasks three!" he says, like one of the ghosts that visited Lemmiwinks or something.

Since we're between Dracula revivals, the villain of this game isn't going to be Dracula, it's going to be this other guy. And the Belmonts aren't available because they "can't use the Vampire Killer whip again until 1999". This being an off-year, it falls on secondary vampire hunting family The Morrises to pick up the slack.

So basically this game has a non-Belmont protagonist fighting a non-Dracula antagonist. It's cool that they're trying some new things with it.

The main draw of this game is the way the castle is actually just a hub area, and probably barely a third of the game world. Most of the places you can go are pocket-zones accessed by jumping into paintings. Yeah, like Mario 64. This was a great idea and makes this game a lot more interesting.

The first painting world is really nice, a foggy overcast castle town with bookstores and whatnot. It would be one of the coziest video game locations I've seen if it had a fireplace somewhere and no monsters.

The backgrounds combine both 2D and 3D. You can see the painting-like 2D backgrounds, with moving 3D closer-to-foreground objects like the building here that shifts as you run past it.

This spot is a good place to gain a bunch of early levels, since this Death Mask gives about 10x the exp of the fodder enemies in the area and can be beaten with one well-placed axe throw. Do this a few times, wait for stamina to replenish, repeat. That said, there's a much better spot soon enough. I'd get to level 7 here, which the player is likely already most of the way to depending on how long the Axe took to drop.

After getting to level 7, I continue on. The enemy sprites are REALLY detailed in this game, and the backgrounds... man. I always sold this game short compared to the two Soma games, and I really shouldn't have.

While most of the time you can safely play as one character or the other and either fly solo or switch between them, occasionally you need both out for a particular puzzle. This early mine cart is one such situation. You have to place one character in the mine cart (Down+A to make them stay put) and have the other character throw the switch before QUICKLY switching back to the mine cart character (X button) as the cart takes off.

The boss here is Dullahan, a big knight. No relation to Dullahan from Final Fantasy VI. This thing strikes hard, but it's slow. The good news is, I managed to find the second whip, which is just strong enough to be worth using for a bit here.

The first of several super-attacks this game contains, where your characters combine their power and burn most of the stamina bar to UNLEASH HELL.

Pressing Up+X gets you this "Let's Fighting Love" imagery, followed by...

...BIG LIGHTNING ATTACK that does huge damage to everything onscreen. These super-attacks are good for taking out big opponents and monsters that you might be underleveled for, and resting for 30 seconds or so will make it usable again.

The next boss is Behemoth. Missed getting a shot of it, but he chases you through a hallway near the beginning of the game. This time you can fight back.

This leads to a confrontation with Dracula's perennial sidekick. This is pretty early for him to be showing up, isn't it?

The weird thing is, Death is here because he's awaiting the return of Dracula. Doesn't he know Brauner is the new bad guy?

Nope. Matter of fact Death didn't even know Brauner was here. The new bad guy is so weak that Death is no-selling him.

Death takes off because he's got no quarrel with our heroes (as they're not hunting Dracula). Well, that's an interesting bit of character growth. And it sounds like Death expects Dracula to revive soon (no doubt because of the WORLD WAR currently going on in the outside world).

Jonathan is miffed because he can't use the Belmont whip. It's so limp and ineffectual! Well, he'll figure something out. These other, stronger whips apparently won't do the job of slaying vampires the way the Vampire Killer would, but we have to power it up (i.e. Jonathan needs to gain the power to use it correctly).

This next section has stained-glass windows and gothic architecture. They saved most of the oomph for the painting worlds, but they did a great job with the castle as well despite it being downgraded a bit in importance.

This spot right here is the third (and last) level-grind spot I hit up. Axe Armor is first to get the Axe, the Deathmask at the beginning of the misty city is second to gain a couple extra levels, and this spot is next. These three foes give you a total of 162 EXP (way more than any single foe to this point), and if you run in from the right, they don't turn around in time. You can just whip 3x, win, leave the room, return. Levels fly by and I went from 11 to 18 in basically a few minutes here.

However, there's another reason to do this: These guys drop the Skeleton Sniper spell for Charlotte, which lets her summon them as her Up+Attack special weapon. This is much, much better than her default fire attack. Charge it up, and it'll summon FOUR snipers with one attack (which then proceed to unleash eight bullets). At this point in the game it's insanely OP and will chew through boss health.

Next boss is this annoying blob that's straight out of Yoshi's Island on the SNES. You strike this pot to make the blob show up, then beat it up. Helps to have one character doing one role and one doing the other role.

Can also push the pot around. No pits to push him into though. Look at Charlotte putting her back into it.

One of the game's most key relics, this makes the game far more fun and playable. Not sure how I lived without it. The map is much more open now (and easier to get around on).

Like the previous Igavanias, Great Armor isn't a boss, but rather a roadblock regular foe (that usually has really important drops, especially in Dawn of Sorrow).

This is a good opportunity to try my latest Up+X giga attack, an X-Strike type move.

This attack is AWESOME and makes short work of this giant bastard. Everything about this game so far has been solid and just clicked, and I think we might have a new Igavania frontrunner...maybe.

The next painting level is my favorite out of all of them, the desert. They really made the most out of being able to use different biomes in this game due to the painting structure, and this really sets it apart from the rest of the 'Vanias.

The music here is a rockin tune, and fits the environment. To be a bit less restrained, this is one of the greatest themes in the entire Castlevania series. It exemplifies how this game is able to step outside of its own comfort zone to do things like exploring a pyramid.

I'm about a third of the way through the game, more on this later.

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