Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Switch): COMPLETED!

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Switch): COMPLETED!

After so many, let’s be honest, near identical Castlevania games where you go into Dracula’s castle and explore and there’s a ballroom and a clock tower and some sewers, Portrait of Ruin comes up with a way of changing that. Sure, you’re still in the castle, but you’re not up against Dracula – just some other guy who has taken over his house and put paintings up everywhere.

Each painting leads to a different world, so there’s a creepy house, an Egyptian pyramid, a village, and a weird circus where the rooms are sometimes upside down or rotated 90 degrees.

It still plays like a “normal” Castlevania, just these worlds are a bit more linear and it feels like a hub world with levels within it. Like a 2D Super Mario 64? Sort of. Maybe. In this game you play as both Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin, whom you swap between at will. Jonathan is your “standard Belmont type”, albeit unable to make full use of the Vampire Killer whip, and son of John Morris from Castlevania: Bloodlines/The New Generation. Charlotte is a Sypha/Maria magic type and supposedly a descendant of Sypha Belnades. I’d totally forgotten this was effectively a sequel to the Mega Drive game, and it was only when (minor early spoiler) Eric Lecarde from that game turned up that I twigged.

It isn’t as good as Dawn of Sorrow, and the “worlds” in paintings are all duplicated as darker, harder versions later which is a bit of a cheat, but it’s still a great game.

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