Topic: Portrait of Ruin

[Sumac]

One of the worst games in the series. Though somehow it's much closer to "Castlevania" than ASO and DOS.

Gameplay was generally rehash of previous games. Johnatan was very "Soma-like" and ultimately boring. Charlotte on the other hand was a breath of fresh air after all this countless "whip'n'sword heroes". I used her to complete most of the game. Johnatan was usually shutdown and off screen. Only times when I used him is to defeat first boss, Reaper and "Drac'n'Reaper combination". And obviously Richter battle since there were no choice. All other times I played as Charlotte and that was probably exactly what made me think of this game as a "mediocre game" rather than "horrible game" that POR had potential to be.
Quest were boring. I completed maybe like 20 of them and then stopped. In OOE I completed all quests and it is the only "metroidvania" in the series that I completed on 100%.
Partner system was crap. It was advertised gimmick that was really tacked in the game without any idea of how to make it relevant to the gameplay as a whole and not few moments in the begining and final boss battles.


Storywise the game as it is now is a garbage. There was tremendious potential to the story of this game to be one of the darkest and most mature in the series. But as it happens, in the darkest hour, IGA decided for whatever reason to retool potentially the best story in the series into animeish generic crap. Characters were degraded into idiots, new "villain" was barely there as well as Reaper and Dracula made his mandatory (and absolutely needless) appearance. Suffice to say the game made me whimp, because even now, there are shades of what could have been, if POR wasn't created with little children in mind.
It's still a bit better in story department than AOS / DOS, because it's actually have ties with the rest series and it's not just some randomness about japanese priests and the stuff.

Levels were mediocre. Dracula's castle looked like it was recently built. Or robbed. Nothing interesting at all and most of it's areas were generic. Portraits were a bit more interesting, but only because of the novelty, not because they had strong designs. Circus was ugly and disconnected, even more than areas in Dracula X. Wichtes school was boring. Egypt levels were probably the biggest WTF moment the series have seen. It was like they were ripped out of completely different game alltogether and put into Castlevania to spare dev.team inhuman efforts of creating some original area.
What really make me dislike Portrait areas is the fact that were doubled. Completing them once was boring. Completing them twice was like crawling through the mud. Reminded me about my time in the second castle in the SOTN.

Music didn't do anything for me. Most of the tracks were filled with generic DS clanking. Though I think, that unlike HOD, the music in this game was generally spoiled by it's arrangement, not because tracks were really bad or uninspired. My favorite melody in this game (and the only track that I seriously liked in POR) is "Hail form the past". Ironically it came from the first Egyptian level, so one can say that they weren't that useless after all.

Generally the game had potential. But it was all wasted to create some kiddy Castlevania game without much of the novelty or the inspiration. There were neat ideas here and there, but it was not enough to save the whole game from being mediocre.

And I agree with The Silverlord about the fact that LOS being balmed for being "not-castlevaniash" enough, while POR generally was much worse in that aspect (even if it's in continuty with the other games).

[Flame]

You sound like you havent even played AoS or DoS...

"Randomness about Japanese priests"? Really? Theres far more to it than just "Japanese priests". In fact- there was only one involved, and despite his function, he is a relatively minor character in the backstory.

I find AoS (not DoS mind you, it can rot in hell with PoR and HD) to be pretty much the true sequel to Symphony that IGA keeps trying to make. It had an alucard expy, and the castle felt just as mystical and cool as it did  in Symphony. The Music and Areas were top notch, hindered only by the hardware capabilities...

PoR though, just doesnt feel like a CV game to me. the Portrait system was also a poor excuse to travel to other locations without actually leaving the typical IGA castle environment. It also felt really contrived. And Brauner was pretty weak as a character. He's another Nosferatu expy, when we already have the actual Orlock (Olrox) it could have retained the plot of someone trying to take control of the castle, WITHOUT Brauner, with Olrox instead- and a different story behind the Desu twins.  Reverse it in fact. THEY get kidnapped to force Eric Lecarde to visit the castle, (since I cant imagine the weilder of the Lecarde Spear allowing himself to get Captured so easily) where he then gets defeated by his Vampirized daughters/Olrox/all three.

There. I just made up a better plot than IGA did.

[Sumac]

You sound like you havent even played AoS or DoS...

Nope. I played them both. In my opinion both games were very good in the gameplay department. AOS was better of the two, since it felt more fresh and was overall closer to the "Castlevania" feel. DOS was a very solid game gameplay-wise, but not so good in anything else.

"Randomness about Japanese priests"? Really? Theres far more to it than just "Japanese priests". In fact- there was only one involved, and despite his function, he is a relatively minor character in the backstory.

I meant 1999 war story - Hakuba clan in general not Mina herself. Though her role was just mandatory "girlfriend of a main hero who saves him from going to the drak side".

It had an alucard expy, and the castle felt just as mystical and cool as it did  in Symphony. The Music and Areas were top notch, hindered only by the hardware capabilities...

I held Soma in a higher reagrd rather than just Alucard expy, unlike Juste. He was not bad character, just his backstory was really odd. Though this sentiment goes for a whole Sorrow dilogy. Music in AOS was good - in fact one of the tracks - "Ruined Castle Corridor" was for several month probably my most favorite Castlevania tune. I remember humming myself this melody for the whole days. Areas were good, nothing out of ordinary, but not boring either, unlike ones in DOS.

[Flame]

Well, he IS more than an expy, but he is still cast in the same Alucard gameplay mold. Thats what I meant.

His backstory actually makes so much more sense if you go by the american "transfer student" story rather than the "Japanese student" story.Since theres no reason why the soul of a European vampire would reincarnate into a Japanese person (but then again, what do i know about reincarnation?)

[uzo]

PoR still sucks.

Did Right:
Whips come back
Diagonal whip attack (missing down though)
Two characters like DoS but at once
Many subweapons/skills
Non-Dracula big bad
Awesome boss battles (Death, Drac&Death)

Did Wrong:
Anime shit
Completely wasted potential (No NAZIS, nothing about WWII than a passing mention, Vrill Society, etc etc etc)
Boring fetch quests, with a shitty interface for assigning them
No real puzzles/interactivity with the team system
FLAT level design everywhere
Repeat areas (I didn't mind as much but it could have been better)
New sprites clashed with existing ones greatly
Zombies are edited from Trevor sprites. REALLY Konami? You couldn't make new fucking zombies?
Dracula was unnecessarily thrown in
Dracula gets one off'd by a retarded main character 2 seconds after he wakes up
Jonathan's character is just simply retarded
STOP TREATING ME LIKE A CHILD (horrible dialog)
Grinding for sub-weapon mastery
Brauner's short role
No John & Eric mode
Very weak connection to Bloodlines


God, I could go on and on.

[Opium]

Gosh, after reading a lot of the negative feedback about the game, I have a new appreciation for not giving a shit about story.  I seriously could care less about it.  You kinda have to if all of your favorite game franchises are japanese.

[Harrycombs]

Gosh, after reading a lot of the negative feedback about the game, I have a new appreciation for not giving a shit about story.

I don't really care about the story either, but there was so much more that was wrong with this game. The level design is atrocious. Its extremely repetitive and the enemy placement is just random. The portraits were cool the first time, but then you have to go through basically the same levels again at the very end. The boss battles were a giant step backward from the spectacular battles in Dawn. I think the soundtrack was also inferior to Dawns. Koshiro's music was good but Yamane's stuff was just kind of bland. On top of all of that you will probably play as John for 90% of the game. The dual character mechanic was horribly done. Also, the art style is terrible. Most of the sprites are ripped from older games (some even from Dawn what the hell) and the new enemies looked like crap and their art style often clashed with other reused sprites (although not as badly as the new sprites in OoE did, those were even worse).

Its an enjoyable game, but its just inferior to pretty much all other Metroidvanias.

[Opium]

I was really focusing on the numerous story gripes when I talked about not giving a shit about story, of course.  Some of the gripes almost seemed to punish konami for not making a bigger effort to be less japanese.  I kinda get a little kick out of the japanese quirkyness.  If you think about some of those plot ideas and characters trying to be integrated into the european and american vampire/dracula myths, it just gets laughable. 
As far as the gameplay goes, I think many of the gripes just seem to have more to do with people's individual tastes, so there's really no wrong answers.  I do struggle with the notion that everyone just ends up being jonathan all the time.  Why is that?  Is there something wrong with charlotte?  Does it not add something positive to the game when one incorporates strategy which employs both characters?  I admit that I played Jonathan almost the entire time the first time I played through the game.  I attribute this partly to him being the default, but mostly to how familiar he seemed.  I understood his character more because he was so similar to past CV characters that I have played as.  Charlotte was something new and different to me, and so I only played as her very little.  Once I finished the game, I felt like I hadn't had the full experience they were trying to give me so I played it again only this time I opted to be charlotte nearly all the time and rarely use jonathan.  After that playthrough, I felt totally comfortable with both characters, so every playthrough after that I ended up figuring out the best times to play as each character and it became much more fun that way.
I agree that the 2-character mechanic did not see it's full potential due to lack of requiring it save for a few simple places.  I agree that the level design wasn't stellar and that the repeating of the levels was cheap.  I especially didn't like the circus-themed areas, but didn't hate them.  The things that I did like about the game weren't bad enough to make me not have a positive view of the game as a whole. I really liked how fresh the game was to me.  I'm glad that it wasn't another game that tried to be like sotn or one of the sorrow games.  I always believed that the designers felt like those ideas were getting stale, and they really were, so that's why PoR is so different.  Because it was fresh and new, it seems more likely that it would be unpolished, so I hope they make another game like it only this time iron out the creases and address some of the gripes that I consider to be more or less legitimate.
Until I read this thread, I hadn't really spent a lot of time comparing it to other CV games because it's so different, and I think I liked it more.  I still like it though, and plan on playing it a few more times over the years. 

[Ookalf]

His backstory actually makes so much more sense if you go by the american "transfer student" story rather than the "Japanese student" story.Since theres no reason why the soul of a European vampire would reincarnate into a Japanese person (but then again, what do i know about reincarnation?)

Why should he particularly have to reincarnate as an American? Human is human, after all. Or are we just being ethnocentric here?

[Obviously]

The first time I played Portrait of Ruin I got about half way through and stopped playing. Eventually there was word of OoE coming out so I decided I'd better go and beat PoR. I restarted from the beginning and I had a much funner time. I kind of enjoyed the lighter than usual story and characters. I thought the art style felt more "Saturday morning cartoon" than anime. It wasn't the best but I preferred it to the generic anime feel of DoS.

I had fun playing as both characters, Charlotte especially as she simply wrecks most bosses. I had hoped that there would've been more references to WWII such as Zombie Nazis and thought that was some serious missed potential. The gauntlet area, though a little tacked on and sort of artificially increasing the length in the game, was pretty fun and challenging and the reward for getting through it is one of my favorite Castlevania attacks ever.

With all the little nods and references to past games it feels like Konami was trying to make an anniversary game that was full of fan service for older Castlevania fans while also trying to appeal to everybody. Some things worked, some things didn't.

The Dracula and Death tag-team fight really surprised me and I got a kick out of it. The game was both very familiar and very different. I was personally pretty content when I stepped away from it.

[Flame]

Why should he particularly have to reincarnate as an American? Human is human, after all. Or are we just being ethnocentric here?

Let me re-phrase. I didnt say he was an American. The Localization, (the english one anyway) says he is a transfer student studying in Japan. It doesnt state a nationality, which means he might even be european. THATS what i meant.

[Sumac]

Well, he IS more than an expy, but he is still cast in the same Alucard gameplay mold. Thats what I meant.

That's what I meant too. =)

His backstory actually makes so much more sense if you go by the american "transfer student" story rather than the "Japanese student" story.Since theres no reason why the soul of a European vampire would reincarnate into a Japanese person (but then again, what do i know about reincarnation?)

When I learnt that Soma is Japanese in japanese version of the game I was surprised and dissapointed. Soma being transfer student was one of the few things that made sense in the whole "reincarnation / solar eclipse" mess and apparently even that was screwed up.

The first time I played Portrait of Ruin I got about half way through and stopped playing.

The same happened with me, when I played SOTN.

[thernz]

im sure if you can reincarnate into an ant, you can reincarnate into a japanese person just fine

[Nagumo]

i suppose dracula was deemed unfitting for the "japanese person" caste and was promoted to the "american/european exchange student" caste instead by the aos localizers   

because that totally made more sense 

[whitedragon_nall]

Didn't Narkolepsi post something a while back about Nostradamus' prophecy that actually helped explain the whole "Dracula in Japan" thing?

EDIT: It appears I saved it.
http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,3745.msg76948.html#msg76948