This year's Castlevania, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, is at least noteworthy for not using the touch screen or top screen just for the sake of using them. As you guide Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin through the game's variety of stages, there are no magical sketches to draw and the top screen simply displays the map or important information. It's good to see such a conservative approach to DS programming, rather than letting gimmicks screw up gameplay, but that overly conservative approach is apparent throughout the title.
The best part of Portrait's new features is having two characters operating at once. Being able to switch between the traditional weapon-and-toughness gameplay of Jonathan and the delicate, precise magical touches of Charlotte expands the tactical possibilities for boss fights, and having both available at the same time works surprisingly well. The character you aren't controlling will stick close to you and lend his or her support in combat adequately, being summoned with a tap of the A button and firing off their special ability with the R shoulder button.
X swaps your control from one character to the other, and the whole system works really well. It's fast enough to make switching characters in combat feasible, and the puzzles that revolve around using both characters cleverly -- such as placing one in position to clear a jump while the other presses a switch on the opposite side of the screen -- are functional and bugless. Having both characters doesn't deeply change combat or puzzle-solving, but it is fun.
Teleporting outside of the traditional boundaries of the castle by stepping through the titular portraits, my initial feelings that Ruin is uninspired, but fun, are supported. Despite drastically different settings -- like fighting through an Egyptian desert and tomb -- the gameplay feels like it's just a placeholder between interesting boss fights. Not bad by any stretch, and having new, interesting background art is a nice changeup. What it isn't is an actual challenge from puzzles or non-bosses, reducing most of the new levels to more of the same from the handheld Castlevania series.
Like Madden, it's an excellent core game that needs more to justify each yearly addition. It seems like more time could have been spent to really integrate the dual character system into the level design, or the levels themselves could have more drastic departures from the "save, upgrade weapon, fight easy monsters, fight interesting boss, save" than simply new skins.
Although the online features sound promising, there aren't enough people online playing yet to make any final judgments. That noted, my impression from the single-player game is that the additions and changes that were made, as well as the overall design, are excellent but don't justify releasing this Castlevania so soon. I'm still enjoying the game immensely, and I expect most people will, but for Castlevania to move forward it needs to be more than minute tweaks and cosmetic changes year after year.
