Where's the CV Portrait of Ruin thread?!?

This game is awesome. This is the castlevania I’ve had the most fun playing, the music is excellent, the graphics are excellent and I like the way the voice acting has been used. The story isn’t bad either. This is truly a surprise. I expected much much less. God I hated Soma’s haircut.

Yeah it kicks ass. I was also surprised at the last battle. For the first time Dracula is smart and has Death fighting alongside! Not that it helped, he was still easy, but it was fun and cool anyways :stuck_out_tongue:

Being underleveled, broke and having no weapons makes battles pretty damn challenging. I’m currently on The Creature and his fucking unavoidable attack that hurts you despite not showing it hits you is fucking cheap.

Yeah, this is a pretty good game. I wish it had more to do with WWII. At least gimme some zombie soldiers or something, otherwise why make it 1944?

At any rate, I liked how Brauner was actually human (despite being a vampire); he had feelings and cared for his daughters.

It’s also worth noting what happens when you hold up for ten seconds. Especially in front of Vincent.

Yeah, I dug the game too. Shop mode was an interesting addition, and while I didn’t do much Co-op, it was pretty fun too. Though I wish that Co-op wasn’t limited to Boss Rush only, it could have been so much more.

I’m disliking the new heavily anime-influenced character art that we’ve seen since Dawn of Sorrow, though. It’s just so generic and bland, and doesn’t really fit Castlevania. When I think of the series, I don’t think of ‘^_^’ emoticons.

My only other real gripe about the game is that it feels shorter than DoS did. The main quest, anyway. It DOES have a few more extra modes than DoS did, which is nifty (AxeArmor for the win) but I got through the main game too quickly. It’s true that the overall map size, when you factor in every sub-map, would exceed DoS’s map. But despite that, the game has far too many teleport nodes throughout the castle and paintings. You can zip around much more easily than you could with DoS, and that really cuts down on gametime. Plus, the last four paintings being lumped in together, instead of spread around the castle like the first four, also cuts down on gametime. And by the time you get to them you have just about all the ‘travel powers’ gotten already, so even though they’re four new painting worlds, you can get through them MUCH faster than the first four.

But, getting the record player, and Record 5, and playing Simon’s Theme during the final battle is full of win and awesome.

I normally dislike games that use ‘hub’ style gameplay. Take Mario and Luigi 2. The first game had a nifty overworld in the Beanbean kingdom and it felt more RPG-ish. While I mostly enjoyed the sequel, I really hated that Princess Peach’s castle was the hub, and amounted to a ‘state select’ style of play. But PoR does this pretty well since the main castle is also a much bigger area. And by giving us the portrait worlds it allowed us to see new areas and environments that otherwise we couldn’t really do in Castlevania, to break out of seeing the same old stuff. Nation of Fools probably has my favorite map design in the game. I just kinda wish the last four worlds weren’t rehashes of the first four.

EDIT: Oh yeah. I ripped the entire soundtrack myself, since I didn’t see it up for download anywhere. I love games with sound tests that make this easier. Anyone who wants it, send me a PM.

In agreeance to the SpoonyBard, I would also like to stqate my preference for the non-anime character art, as seen in SOTN and HOD and such.

I would rather the paintings be in galleries instead of just one painting alone in a room (for example, the portrait for the Forgotten City could be placed in a room full of egypt-inspired art, and so on). The placment of the final four levels does seem like they ran out of ideas and decided “let’s just put them all here,” and perhaps new levels would have been better, but I’m not really complaining.

And Nation Of Fools is indeed one awesome level.

I personally really like the art style of PoR. I didn’t like the designs from DoS though. And spoony, check your inbox.

Checked, replied, sent.

For anyone else who wants the music I ripped, I have a sendspace link to use:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/je5w3b

Oh yeah, did anyone else get the preorder package? I got the game when it came out. It’s a sweet deal, Konami knows how to do pre-order goodies.

This game is still in the cellophane, since I still don’t have a DS. Argh. I’m so looking forward to playing!

Honestly, when I finished it, I thought to myself: “It’s really unfortunate that they didn’t make this one BEFORE Dawn of Sorrow.” I think Dawn of Sorrow is just a much more fun gameplay experience. Definitely worth the money, though; I just think that it’s a step backwards in the fun department in comparison to Dawn of Sorrow.

I got the CE pack too. I really like it. My only comment is that I think they should’ve included Rude Awakening from CV Circle of the Moon and they didn’t. I thought that was a BIG mistake on the music CD, that would’ve been perfect otherwise.

Rude Awakening would have been nice. But I found it even stranger that there was no version of Illusionary Song/Dance/Whatever on there either. How many games has THAT one been in?

Speaking of CV music, Portrait of Ruin has five remixes from early Castlevania games (and one straight port from DoS).

Iron Blue Intentions from Castlevania Bloodlines (Genesis)
Crucifix Held Close from (I think) Haunted Castle, MSX game
Overture from Castlevania III (prolly one of my favorite tracks)
Bloodlines Bequeathed from Rondo of Blood/Dracula X, and
Simon’s Theme from Castlevania IV

For a remix geek, these tracks are awesome. The direct port from DoS was ‘Great Gate of Darkness’. Though, personally, if they were porting a boss theme from DoS I would have preferred ‘Into the Dark Night’ but meh.

I think Iron Blue Intentions might be from CV1 originally, but I could be off base.

Crucifix Held Close is from Haunted Castle, which is also an arcade game.

This is also a nitpick, but Bloodlines Bequeathed also takes part of its remix from SotN’s ‘Blood Relations’, which uses the original melody in the song anyways.

Thanks for taking the time to make and upload that, by the way! I’ve been wanting those for a while, now. :smiley:

Iron Blue Intentions for sure isn’t from CV1, unless you mean one of the many variations of the game and not the NES one I’m familiar with. It’s certainly not in the NES version, anyway.

And you’re technically right about Bloodlines Bequeathed, but I was just too lazy to list off the SotN version in there too. It’s the same basic melody, and it started in Rondo.

And no sweat. Sometimes I get antsy when I can’t find the OST of a game I like, so I have to take matters into my own hands. I made the rips for myself, but I don’t mind spreading the love around.

By the way, Spoony…how exactly do you go about ripping music from DS games? I’d like to make a rip or two myself, but I don’t know what’s necesary. Do you get like, a double male cord and plug one side into the DS and the other into the computer speaker, or what? I’m curious!

Yeah, you get a double-male cord. One end goes into the DS’s headphone jack, the other into the ‘Line In’ part of your PC soundcard. I tried ‘Microphone’ but the quality was crap, Line-In is the better choice for ripping music.