Once more of that great 2D Castlevania action.
As a foot note I strongly recommend that if you haven´t played Dawn of Sorrow yet you should definitely finish that before starting to play Portrait of Ruin.
Graphics have been improved since Dawn of Sorrow and now the player can witness more 3D effects. Also the backgrounds sometimes move in a different pace when player is moving across them. Environments are very detailed and every area has its own theme and enemies in terms of graphics and music. Obviously the game engine is in full use, because in few instances the frame rate takes a hit, especially when there´s lots of particles in the air.
Music is once again the best thing about this game and it has been like this for many years now. This time you can also find or buy from a friend (wireless or Wi-Fi) a record player and earn different records in the course of the game. This means that you can manually chance the music you hear in that game area if you wish. Sound effects are also familiar and they work, but this time there are some real voice acting as well. Unfortunately they are few and far between, but it´s better than nothing. The story itself is told through sharply written dialog text and these conversations help to move the story forward.
Core of gameplay is the same 2D side scrolling as you remember from previous Castlevania games. This time the catch is that you have two characters and one of them is controlled by you and the other moves by your side using the game´s AI. It all works well and you quickly get use to it.
Collecting lots of items, weapons, spells and other gear as you progress through the game is once again present and this time you get to use many different whips too. My personal favourite is the Flame Whip, which brings back memories all the way back to Castlevania II: Simon´s Quest on the NES. Unfortunately in Portrait of Ruin you can´t make your weapons better with infused souls like you could in Dawn of Sorrow.
Dracula´s castle is again pretty big, but the map is very similar to what you probably remember in Dawn of Sorrow. Luckily there is more gameplay here, since there are 9 portraits, 8 of which have their own music, level design, enemies and boss fights. This brings a welcome amount of variety and makes the experience longer. There is also some back tracking because you sometimes need specific power-ups to proceed in some places. To me this was not a problem, but I guess it´s a gameplay feature worth mentioning.
The use of DS touch screen is very limited and you can use three feathers in every map to mark different points of interest. This is a great feature and I hope that game developers would use this mechanic more often in the future. It would make games like Zelda and Metroid a lot more user friendly.
There are many side quests to choose from and doing at least some of them is recommendable, since the items you get from them makes later portions of the game much easier. You also have an option here and that is to buy rare items in Shop Mode.
Shop Mode either via Wi-Fi or wireless mode is a great feature (with or without friend codes), but this mode has a few annoying flaws as well. In Shop Mode you can sell items you´ve found in single player mode. The thing here is that you don´t lose those items you sell through Wi-Fi. This means that you can sell Alucard´s spear 30 times in a row and you still have one at your own disposal. Unfortunately you can´t re-sell items you´ve bought through Wi-Fi unless you´ve found them yourself in the single player mode.
Shop Mode makes collecting money a lot easier than it has been in previous Castlevania games. It also reduces the game´s difficulty, because you can use items that would normally be at your disposal much later in the single player mode. There can be three customers at the same time in one shop, but for some reason you always need to close your shop after everyone has left. It would be so much easier just to be able to open a store and leave your DS online for hours or days and people could buy stuff whenever they wish. This can be done in Animal Crossing Wild World for example, so why not here in Castlevania?
Boss Rush Mode is here again and as usual it´s not very interesting: you just fight against game´s bosses in a linear succession as fast as you can. Co-op is a new feature, which means that you can play with someone else in Boss Rush Mode. This can be done either in wireless mode or Wi-Fi and with or without friend codes. It all works just fine, but again it´s not that interesting.
It takes around 7 hours to get the Bad Ending (which is really lame) and somewhere around 10 to 15 hours to get the Good Ending. Doing different side quests takes of course more time and there is a chance to have a 1000% map completion (this means 10 different maps). Good Ending is worth getting, since it unlocks a few bonus extras of which my favourite is the Sound Mode.
For me it took 14 hours and 26 minutes to get 998,1% completion and after that I had 1 647 174 of gold. This gaming experience was worthy of purchase.