Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Review by Diplo

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o, there was Metroid: Zero Mission.
Instead of the game ending with Mother Brain, Samus chased down the mother ship and infiltrated it, introducing a sneaking mission. Without a power suit, beam cannon, and normal life-bar, she was charged with the task of navigating the maze while avoiding every enemy. Every room became a breeding ground for instantaneous and potentially fatal mistakes.

I saved, quit, and didn't come back until Christmas break this year.
Now that I think back on it, my behavior was rash. I. . .think I probably thought, "Why is the game making me do this? I want all my stuff back, and for Metroid to be itself. I don't have the patience for such a thing."

Which, yes, is ridiculous. Who doesn't have a half hour to give to a game when there's nothing else to do?

Upon restarting where I left off, I arrived at the conclusion that the additional segment is one of the most brilliant things in the series.
If you get far enough, you'll find yourself at an ancient altar, initiating a boss battle. After the fight, Samus gets her suit back – and it becomes glorious. The heroic Brinstar theme starts playing, you're suddenly having revenge upon all the Space Pirates, and you are actually grateful for your abilities. Hide-and-seek tension turn into a new found confidence and direction, and each builds off of one another.

In this, Metroid: Zero Mission effectively keeps the series' characteristics alive, while presenting something fresh, potentially controversial, and well made.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin does not do anything of the sort. What little it tries new is left tremendously immature, and often ends up being what we have seen before – but with some ornamentation to try to mask the possible yawns.
"No change is a good thing"? If PoR is any indication of where the series is headed, Igarashi must seriously reconsider his efforts before anything else.

Like many of Iga's games, Portrait of Ruin is set not long after a previously established date. The foundation, in this case, is Bloodlines.
The Second World War gives rise to chaos and innumerable deaths, and Dracula's Castle is able to reform. Jonathan Morris, son of John Morris (oh, the humanity!) charges himself with tackling the problem. Charlotte Aulin, a magician, joins him. A monk from the Church, Vincent, tags along to sell items and provide much unnecessary comic relief.

Already, the premise is a hell of a lot more interesting than Dawn of Sorrow's ever was. Pity, though, that nothing is done with it. Both of the Sorrow games did take place in the future, but their situations didn't require any delving into the age of technology besides including some modern contraptions. Aria was in an eclipse, and Dawn whisked Soma away to an antique settlement in Europe.

PoR, however, begins at such an interesting junction of history, and doesn't use its occurrence as anything, save an excuse for another resurrection. Normally, I'm rather content with the castle serving as a time capsule to escape to, but…there's so much potential conflict, here, and the only attempt to incorporate any of its elements in the actual game is a squad of petrified soldiers in Medusa's room. Why not expand on that troop's prior involvement? I confess it's a tiny bit absurd, but where is the Nazis' involvement with the castle? Wouldn't they try to take advantage of it?

DoS' dialogue annoyed the hell out of me. The writing was more competent, grammatically, but lacked the honest, if queer, quotable interest that's in other games. Portrait suffers the same fate. Someone believed it would be swell to assign Jon the catchphrase of, "No problem." They also thought it clever to have every other figure tease Charlotte about her age. By the end, I wanted a silent, classic ending where everyone would shut up and watch the castle crumble.

Being able to travel into paintings and visit locales outside of the castle is the principally advertised feature. The idea itself is intriguing, certainly.
Bloodlines has some of the best set-pieces of the series. The Atlantis Shrine floods and drains, and the Tower of Pisa actually leans. I mean, there's a lot of creative stuff happening, thanks to the diversity of environments and the talent of the developers.

Portrait's ambition, however, follows the plot's suit, and barely achieves anything outside of the concept at its most primal level. Jon and Charlotte are, indeed, able to break free of the castle's clutch, but the epiphany of freedom one would expect is, time after time, merely a glimmer. The paintings are simply linear trudge-fests that, usually, utilize the very worst of the recent games' (DoS', I'm looking at you in particular) level designs – boxes with inexplicably supernumerary ledges stuck here and there.

Such locations are shameful false advertising. When I entered the City of Haze, I was hoping to contend with obscuring mist, reckless vehicles, occasional rain, hiding enemies, and majestic buildings. Yet it is nothing more than the biggest bakery in the world and an uninteresting chapel slapped next to one another.

I mean, why does the Forest of Doom take place inside a haunted school for 9/10ths of the map? And why is the other 1/10th a few, barren, flat paths?
Where's the exploitation of these areas? Where's the imagination?

And why not surprise with the underlying aestheticism of the theming? Have the city's visuals done in the way an Impressionist would do them! Change the sprites of Jon and Charlotte, area to area, so their abilities are altered as a result of the styles. Make their movements rigid to reflect the stoicism of Egyptian art.

Needless to say, the promised exoticism of the places kind of falls on its face.

While not enough to combat the overall mundanity, there are genuinely delightful points to half of the portraits.

The Nation of Fools is, initially, perhaps the most structurally interesting thing since Symphony of the Night. The bottom of the massive circus is clearly normal, but as you progress around the sides, the demolished houses and tents face to the right and left. The top is totally upside-down. During all this, the enemies adjust – so you'll see Spear Guards nonchalantly patrolling walls. It's pretty wacky. Once I realized, though, that the top and bottom, and left and right, were the same rooms, it lost a chunk of its ingenuity.

Egypt has a pleasant geometry to select rooms. It's somehow nice to have to touch the crannies of rooms to fill the map, again (memories of the Royal Chapel's stairway came to mind).

Still - if anything, the paintings are ways of tacking artificial size on. The game may very well be the biggest Castleroid thus far thanks to them, but this fact is trivialized after actually playing because so much blurs together. Barely any rooms feel special. After not too long, the player is merely going through the motions, because that's what the designers were doing.

Near the "end" of the game, the plot reveals that there are, in fact, four more portals. Instead of this being a turning point, it delivers a hefty blow to the package. The four portraits are the exact same levels – except with small visual changes, different music, different bosses, and different enemies. While it may sound completely tolerable on paper, the extra stages reinforce the weaknesses and cheapen the strengths of the originals.
Symphony's Inverted Castle worked because the architecture was brilliant to begin with – every room that wasn't a straight corridor was noticeably transformed.

Harmony's dual castle functioned as a plot device, as well as a rather clever way to get the player more accustomed to the crazy map, while enhancing the uneasiness of the atmosphere. PoR's flip-sides are just proof that the vampire Brauner must be an extremely uninspired artist.

I've heard from people that the paintings smartly marry the older style with the new. This is incorrect.
The best level-based games kept the player entertained and challenged by witty enemy placement and level design. Timing was crucial. Once the player became associated with their limitations and skills, like a puzzle, every action sequence fell into place and the creators' intent could be seen.
Crows are there on top of the statues in stage 3 of Castlevania so you'll jump up as soon as you see them, fling your whip out, kill them, and continue on. There is a groove you can get into. It wasn't about simple challenge so much as it was about leading you into new, specified situations time after time.

That coherency is not found in Portrait. The only challenge that ever arises is contending with a bevy of enemies or draining bosses of their superabundant health. Were the developers too lazy to think outside of, "Hey, I bet if we put nine Old Axe Armors here, the player will likely be hit a couple times"? Problems are dealt with by spamming moves instead of inventiveness.

I suppose part of the problem with opposition is that many of the enemies are taken from Rondo of Blood. Their mannerisms are still stuck in the notion that the player is a retro Belmont. With all the stuff the characters can do now, I'm surprised the combat hasn't escalated into swirling, aerial fights with crafty enemies. I always felt one of the coolest things was fending off the Flea Riders in SotN's Castle Keep while doing the moon-jump.

I'd be willing to overlook this looseness – as I have with others – if the selection of enemy types was not so brain-dead. Jellyfish float around the city. Axe Armors roam the Egyptian temple. Maids vacuum the floors of caves.

It's a rare thing when you feel a sense of inhabitance because of a correlation between the monster's location, its design, and the surrounding's nature.