Almost ten years after the ground-breaking Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was released for the original Playstation, Dracula’s labyrinthine, hazard-filled castle has yet again materialized from the ether to threaten an unsuspecting world. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, the latest installment in a successful spate of handheld Castlevania games patterned closely after Symphony of the Night, sees you back in the boots of a foppish young hero ready to whip his way through a ghoulish menagerie of enemies in order to foil Dracula’s attempts to sow torment in the land of the living. Castlevania veterans will likely be pleasantly surprised at several key changes Portrait of Ruin makes to the tried and true formula, but as these changes are largely superficial, don’t be surprised if this otherwise enjoyable game leaves you with strong feelings of déjà vu… again.
The most noticeable alteration Portrait of Ruin makes to the formula is the addition of a second playable character. This time, you can choose between Jonathan Morris – a callow vampire hunter of distant relation to the famed Belmonts – and Charlotte Aulin, a young magic adept and companion to Jonathan. You’ll likely notice functional differences between the two heroes early on, and while initially you may stick with Jonathan’s familiar combination of melee attacks and secondary weapons accumulated in the form of collectable power-ups, Charlotte’s potent array of ranged spells offers a fun and viable alternative to her counterpart’s methods, especially in the mid-to-latter portions of the game. Since there’s never a penalty for switching and you’re even able to easily maneuver both characters on screen at once, you may find yourself experimenting with different options on the fly. It’s a simple addition to the gameplay that never becomes a headache.
While the last couple of games in the series have used a contemporary or near-future setting as their backdrop, Portrait of Ruin takes place in the warn-torn Europe of the 1940s, not that you’d ever know it. For the most part, you’ll be sticking to the baroque, sometimes drab interiors of the castle, where you might find yourself wondering how one vampire was capable of amassing a veritable all-star lineup of demon mythology ready at every turn to thwart trespassers.
Speaking of Dracula, he’s actually absent from the mischief this time around. Jonathan and Charlotte discover relatively early on that a mysterious vampire named Brauner has revived Dracula’s castle with the intent of channeling its power to enact his own Doomsday scenario. His plan involves using magical paintings – portraits, if you will – that act as portals to levels outside the actual architecture of the castle. As long as each of these levels’ respective bosses goes undefeated, Brauner and the castle are safe, no matter how many axe armors and skeletons you dismantle.
Despite the game’s subtitle, the portrait levels feel mostly like a diversion, at best, and, at worst, like an excuse to tack on different environments and enemies, not that thematic continuity within the castle has ever been a central concern to the series in the first place. All told, these side levels will occupy approximately only half of the 8-12 hours it will take you to complete the game anyway, so those who might cringe at the idea of maneuvering the duo through, say, the deserts of ancient Egypt needn’t worry too much – there’s plenty of “hub” action to be had in Dracula’s digs.
Portrait of Ruin looks good on the DS, although perhaps not much better than a late-generation Gameboy Advance title. In general, the detail and visual flare largely missing from the backgrounds and environments is made up for by the wide variety of colorful, well-animated spell effects and enemies you’ll encounter throughout the game. While characters such as imps, skeletons, and medusa heads have received only minor graphical upgrades from earlier games and won’t give you much to look at, some of the larger sprites are truly a sight to behold.
While the in-game art style is somewhat of a mixed bag, the anime-styled character portraits that pop up during conversations with NPCs are all crisp and pretty. There’s even a menu feature that allows you to pause the action to see what your two vampire hunters have to say to each other; sometimes it’s just chit-chat that adds continuity to the plot and sometimes there’s a legitimate tip offered that’s actually relevant to the gameplay. That feature and other nice touches such as the availability of the many stat-boosting articles of clothing, optional quests assigned by an enigmatic specter known only as Wind, and Jonathan’s ability to level up any of the number of secondary weapons he uses the most all go a long way toward keeping the experience fresh. The developers were even able to squeeze in a few animated cut scenes that do a good job in pushing the experience a little closer to the handheld next gen.
Portrait of Ruin wouldn’t be a Castlevania game without a strong, memorable musical score, a department in which it definitely delivers the goods. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself hanging idle just to listen to one of the game’s several tracks, many of which deftly fuse a sweeping orchestral feel with the bombastic progressive rock stylings of not just previous installments in the series, but some of the best videogame music from the side-scrolling days of yore. There’s also some digitized speech in the game, sparse though it is, as well as the assorted mix of grunts, groans, and yelps your characters emit in the heat of battle. It’s generally good, but nothing especially memorable.
Portrait of Ruin works well on the DS not because it makes especially good use of any of the system’s unique capabilities, but simply because it offers a gameplay experience that works so well on a handheld. The stylus functionality is all but an afterthought, although keeping the castle map on the second screen is a logical and extremely helpful option. There are some limited Wi-Fi features: one that allows you to play through a Boss Rush mode with a friend and another that lets you set up a store so you can buy and sell items with other players, but neither is especially compelling.
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is good fan service with some notable bells and whistles to those familiar with the series and, overall, a solid action-adventure game with plenty of style and enough depth to set it apart from the pack. For better or worse, the team at Konami has a workable formula and they’re sticking to it.