Topic: I liked Portrait of Ruin

[justin312]

In Reply To #15

What exactly are the reasons its hated?  I've never played it myself, and was planning to pick it up.  It looks like a typical Metroidvania to me, but it seems that certain fans have a real dislike for this game. Just curious as to why that is, before I spend the money on it.  I understand the artwork is one reason, but the same art was in Dawn of Sorrow, so it has to be more than that.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

The guys who wrote the dialogue script were lazy idiots. Other than that, it's mostly hot air.

[paletteswapmonster]

Do you really want me to say why PoR is so damn terrible? I'll do it as long as it doesn't start an argument.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Let's not.

[uzo]

The level design was uninspired and uninteresting. It was very flat in most places. So yeah, the level design was pretty much horrible.

The subweapon leveling up was a nice concept, but executed very poorly. The level goals were way too high.

The art, while "good" in its own style, was overly cartoony and a large stray from the Castlevania tone. It cheapened the atmosphere.

The characters were goofy for the most part. The heroes were just a silly pair of kids, dancing through a magic castle. The most 'serious' moments were usually failures at being serious.

PoR gets an A for weapon variety though. Whips! And not only that, diagonal whipping! So long overdue in my opinion. I wish they went the whole mile with it and gave us diagonal swording, and down whipping too.

I also liked having two character available, like DoS's Julius mode. Thought the team activities were completely under used. I wished there was more of that.

It was nice to get a leveling, and always running, Richter mode too. However they did an epic fail by using loli Maria when the adult one would have been far more interesting.

[paletteswapmonster]

The level design was uninspired and uninteresting. It was very flat in most places. So yeah, the level design was pretty much horrible.

To add to this, the only platforming consisted of zig-zagging vertical spaces, and/or small platforms scattered all over the place. PoR is also probably the most broken CV game. It has about 30 glitches and a bunch of typos. Other than that, Uzo pretty much said why the game is bad.

Also...

Portrait was too "down to the ground", what with having the seemingly endless possibilites the setting opens up only utilized marginally: It's World War II ! ... but only outside Brauner's Castle. Brauner can create portraits that harbour some sort of power and embody his spirit! .... too bad Brauner is a pretty boring guy whose creativity seems to be limited to placing a Jellyfish in the middle of a bakery. Two playable characters! ... if we had a third, we could have pushed  even bigger objects!

Portrait tried to be "cool" by gleaning sprites from its elder brothers and lighting a cigarette only to vomit after the first puff. The vomit consisted of obnoxious characters and lines like "Let's fight for real!" and "I can still kick your ass ", with Charlotte's ANGRY FACE as a big, undigested gobbet somewhere in it.
I don't really think many mental resources went into the production of PoR, to be honest. The only guidelines seem to have been "Make it child friendly!", "Make it cool!" and also "Make it a game!".

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

In Reply To #21

I think 'bad' is relative.  I still like some aspects of PoR more than some aspects of, say, HoD.

While I don't think it's the best game, that's not the point of the thread or the argument.  The argument is that the game gets a lot of unnecessary hate every time it's mentioned, and I can definitely agree with that.

It may be a mediocre Castlevania game at best, but it's not a bad game overall.  There are non-CV games that are far worse.  I think the scales are tipped improperly here.

[justin312]

Gotcha.  I do think the anime art style looks pretty silly and doesn't really fit the series, and it sounds like the protagonist is another 17 year old "cool kid", which is not a good thing IMO.  Maybe I will try to find a used copy just to check it out.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

Jonathan still gets a good deal of character development for a Castlevania. He sure as hell beats most of the Belmonts there. His daddy, too.

[paletteswapmonster]

Jonathan still gets a good deal of character development for a Castlevania. He sure as hell beats most of the Belmonts there. His daddy, too.

Now, how did John get more character development than most of the Belmonts? Did john even get any development? He's just some Texan stranger with a whip to me. I also don't recall much character development from Jonathan.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Personal Opinion:

Real men do not need lines of text to go forth and be badass.

[paletteswapmonster]

Personal Opinion:

Real men do not need lines of text to go forth and be badass.

That's why Simon is the greatest character in the series. He let his actions speak for him. Giving Simon dialogue would do nothing.

[justin312]

Trevor too.  All he ever did was nod, or shake his head.  (Well, until Curse of Darkness, anyway...)

[Kale]

In Reply To #28

Ah, but he had to talk for the lower beings that followed Dracula to understand. I'm sure he didn't have to, and could've just killed them all.

[sonicabid]

In Reply To #29

I liked PoR, but DoS, OoE, CotM and AoS all shit on it. Seems like the middle game out of the portables was always the worst, HoD and PoR. I hated HoD.