Just in the nick of time! With my handheld versions of Castlevania having run out yesterday, Play Asia delivered Portrait of Ruin today. Phew, eh? And… is it any good? Of course it is! It’s ACES! The first thing to hit me was the graphics. Not the character graphics, as although they’re good – they’re nothing special, but the backgrounds. Several layers deep with detailed parallax. 3D objects in the distance (like a big abbey thing which you see ‘around’ …
Another day, another completed Castlevania! So this was a fair bit easier than the last one, although there was a tricky bit near the end with ropes that move up and down and then change direction, with the cogs on either end killing you. The end-of-Dracula’s-castle boss wasn’t Dracula, but Solieyu Belmont, the son of the main character (Christopher Belmont). He was under Dracula’s power, or something, and was actually bloody hard to kill, what with his whip and stuff. …
No sooner was the first GB Castlevania over and done with, I moved straight onto the sequel. And guess what? It’s ace. Not Aria of Sorrow ace, or even Super Castlevania IV ace, but it’s certainly waaaaay better than The Castlevania Adventure. Yeah, so it’s still slow (although not quite as slow), but it’s easier (so far), not jerky, has more detailed graphics and there aren’t any pixel-perfect jumps! BEST. You have four castles to tackle, before moving on to …
Oh my! Only four levels? Just as well as if there were any more, things may have been broken on purpose. Level 3 is the real killer. The spikes are really rather hard to get past. Once you do, however, the rest of the game is pretty easy in comparison. The boss at the end of Level 3 was some sort of Harpy, who was easy to dodge, and then it was on to Level 4. It looked like there …
What? In? Hell? This has to be the slowest, hardest, most irritating game ever made. Ever. Your character (Simon? It doesn’t tell you) moves as a snails pace. You have no subweapons. You can’t jump very far (and the game is full of pixel-perfect jumps), you only have three lives, often when you die you go back miles, and the whole game jerks and judders all over the place. Ace! So I spent AGES trying to get past the Stepping …
I worked my way through the House of Whatsit (I can’t remember it’s real name) and found three buttons which seem to activate locks. Or parts of them, anyway. I then got to a door that I need a Yellow Dragon Key to open, and generally ran out of places to go. I warped back to the shop, and bought some stuff, before going back into the castle and trying the Anti-Soul Mysteries “level”. No, really. That’s what it’s called. …
A new Castlevania game for me to play! And my first 3D Castlevania too. Well, aside from about ten minutes with the abortion that is Castlevania 64. I didn’t really know what to expect. Incidently, in the UK this game is just called “Castlevania“, which kind of makes sense as it’s chronologically the very first “episode” in the series, but elsewhere it has the subtitle “Lament of Innocence“. I’ve not spent long with it yet, having only watched the opening …
So I went rummaging around for three books that Mina suggested I might need. I actually had one already, and the other two were found pretty easily once I’d taken a good look at the map. I found another boss (Legion) who was alarmingly easy to kill, and then got another soul or three. After all that, I had the books required, and the three souls it was suggested I equip (Flame Armour, Succabus, and Giant Bat – all traits …
New Virtual Console Game Day! Yaay! Mind you, I haven’t really played Mario Kart 64 much after buying that last week, but that’s mainly because The Castlevania has stolen my brains. So I downloaded Super Mario World, and tried very hard to get used to the “proper” way of holding the pad (I have this freaky way of doing it with the SNES pad and the classic controller for the Wii isn’t quite right). I think I may have it …
Bossaroo! Did the third boss-room-that-isn’t-a-boss first of all today, and then moved on to the actual next boss. At first, it seemed like it was going to be a giant bat, but then a huge hand came out of nowhere and squashed the bat, killing it. Instead, I had to kill the two hands and two eyes of a, uh, thing. Balgone? Something like that anyway. It was actually pretty easy once I’d sussed the fact you could jump on …
Death = DEAD! Well, sort of. He got sucked into some sort of whirlpool thing. I’d got the lightning doll soul, which really helps, and gone up a couple of levels. In the room just past Death was a soul giving me the power to swim (I guess Soma never got his bronze swimming certificate), so off I went into the waterways in the bottom of the map. Found lots of new baddies, souls, weapons (I now have an ice …
Well. It looks like Death is the next boss after all. I spent ages exploring every single part of the map that I could get to, and found some more weapons, potions and armour (and collected a few souls along the way), but found no other bosses. Now I have to traipse half-way around the castle again to get back to him! Bah.
I’m lost. I think. I killed another boss, and got a power-up to do the Jesus thing and walk on water, which let me access a couple of new areas. However, I then stumbled into some kind of garden filled with giant chickens, and then into some strange castles in the sky that are linked together in a strange way with really difficult wear-jaguars (or something) and devils in. Then I appeared to be in a clock tower, and it …
I’m 35% through this already! Lawks. Killed the Manticore easily this time, as I found that if you stand in the doorway, you can’t be hit. Grenade-tastic! After that, it was STOP! Hammertime! As in, I met Hammer. And he told me he was going to set up a shop by the castle entrance. As you do. I then collected a soul that gave me a double-jump (finally!) and had a bit of an explore some more, heading vaguely to …
Squeezed a bit more of this game into my day, exploring an area I’d have found far more easily if I’d actually looked at the map I’d found. Worked my way up into some sort of bell tower, but couldn’t find anything to do up there, so came back down again. I then found another save point, followed by a Manticore boss, that killed me. So it’s harder than Harmony if nothing else…