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r3dhalo's Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS)
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| [February 10, 2007 03:09:52 AM]
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After playing through a couple areas and fighting a few bosses I've got a little better hang of the dual character gameplay in this new Castlevania game. The only thing really annoying me about it so far is that buying equipment for 2 characters gets really expensive. To keep myself equipped with the best gear I have to spend some time away from the main storyline killing creatures to get enough gold. One of the really fun things about having two characters is that the game designers have used it to create some really awesome new puzzles. One recurring one is that you will have to jump one character up onto a pillar, then use the other character to push the pillar, and then use the character on top of the pillar to jump to a higher area and summon the other character. Also you must do things like put both characters on a single panel to weigh it down enough.
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| [February 9, 2007 03:14:31 AM]
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I've been a fan of the Castlevania games for a while now. I started with the Game Boy Advanced versions (specifically Circle of the Moon) and once I finished those I went backwards in time a little and played Symphony of the Night (which is probably my favorite in the series) for the Playstation1. I was never a big fan of the older games (although I did enjoy Castlevania 4) on the NES and SNES because the controls were not quite as good as what I had come to expect from playing the later versions. I'm just going to pretend that the 3D games in the Castlevania series don't even exist. Basically the Castlevania games represent to me 2d action gaming perfection. The controls have been nearing perfection over the years and far outclass anything else I have played and the level design and art direction are excellent and original consistently throughout the series even though it always sticks to the same general gameplay mechanics. The general game mechanic is that Dracula has somehow come back and you must go into his castle to fight him. His castle has multiple different themed areas full of bosses and obstacles that you must get past. To pass the obstacles you must find new items and abilities that allow you to do things like double jump or shrink down to get into passages that are too high/small. Portrait of ruin adds one big new element to the game by giving you two characters to both at once and separately. You play as Jonathan (who is a descendant of a famous vampire killing family) who is more mele focused and Charlotte who is a powerful magician. The characters are introduced in a cutscene at the start of the game with little background information besides what is revealed in the dialogue, although the information is sparse it is enough to start off the game and introduce the characters. I really enjoyed the in game tutorial that taught you how to play because instead of putting you in a separate "tutorial" area it just drops you into the game and gives you tool tips on how to use the deeper features of the simple controls. One of the first things you learn is how to switch between characters. You can control either one character at a time (and switch between them on the fly) or control both characters at once (where the second character will simply do it's best to mimic you). The advantage of having both characters out at once is that they will both attack so you can do twice as much damage, I didn't realize the drawback for a while but finally noticed that instead of taking damage my second character would drain my MP whenever it got hit (which was often because you don't have direct control over it).
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r3dhalo's Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Friday 9 February, 2007
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