Happy Little Accident
Portrait of Ruin is yet another "Metroid" style castlevania for a handheld, meaning that your characters get upgrades which are required to gain access to parts of a giant castle. It is the second castlevania on the DS. I didn't play the first, but the graphics and animations are better then on the gameboy advance. You also encounter many, many enemies from past Castlevania's.There are some changes in the gameplay. In portrait of ruin you control two characters, each with their own weapons and abilities. You can switch between them or have the CPU control one of them. You can play as the whip cracking Jonathan Morris or the cute witch Charlotte Aulin. Having two characters works nicely. They also have very powerful cooperative moves. In the castle you come across these paintings which serve as portals to separate stages, like in Mario 64. It is fun to discover a new painting while playing. The one gameplay element that kind of ruins this game are the experience points needed to defeat certain level bosses, especially the final boss. Like in castlevania circle of the moon. You'll be travelling endlessly through the bowels of the castle, just get better equipment and more experience points so you can finish the game. It is a real drag, also because the castle isn't that large. You'll see the same corridors over and over again. It would have been a much better game if you could finish it in one run and then if you choose get back in the game, discover the 4 alternate paintings, collect all the stuff and defeat the castle's real master, so to speak.
Portrait of Ruin has some nice touches, but the paint is spreaded too thin.