JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE! JONATHAN! CHAR- SHUT UP.

User Rating: 8 | Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin DS
Alright, first off, sure, it's an 8, but that's CRAP, compared to all the more recent 2D Castlevanias.

Alright, first off, this game is really annoying. The stupid anime drawings with a mediocre storyline..

Okay, this game does not feature Dracula throughout the storyline until the very end, and you only get him with the better ending. Not only that, it doesn't feature any Belmont, nor does it have a good storyline.

You play as Jonathan Morris, and Charlotte Aulin. The two are random kids, one with magic, the other with the Vampire Killer, which is supposed to suck life out of him because he is not a Belmont, but a crappy Morris. This really is never brought up in the storyline apart from one time, where he states how his father died, and after that it really never even matters. Overuse?! Well anyways, you get to fight Richter Belmont to make your whip stronger, which is pretty stupid, because he's retardedly hard compared to your stupid Jonathan.

Alright, enough rant..

The game is pretty smooth, and has really smooth sprites, making the game quite appealing. You go into a different vampire's castle, named somehting. I forget his name. Whatever, the guy's obsessed with paintings. Like Mario and Steve Burns, you'll jump into paintings and get into separate lands, depending on the painting, DUH. Well, yeah, you do all that crap, and you kill the wannabe vampire, who annoys Dracula, and is then basically pwned by him. Draccy then fuses with Death (wtf?) and becomes a gigantic monster.
Why would he only do this to some noob Vampire Killer wielder who needs his girlfriend to save him?

Sorry, ranting again..

The game has some pretty good replay value, really. You can play as pairs of other characters. There's Richter/Maria, both as their original sprites from their separate games. Richter is basically Maxim from HoD, where he's super f***ing fast. And that's basically it. He just gets a whip, and whatnot. Maria is in her 5-year-old looking form, and throws birds and other crap for her weapon. The other pair you are able to play as is the two whatever sisters, who play as pretty big bosses throughout the game. The sisters are pretty fun, if you want to call it that. You control both at once, and I forget how, I THINK one is DPAD and other is buttons, and then you shoot crap with tapping the screen. I forget to be honest, it was fun until the 2nd map.

Alright, it's not a bad game, I just was very disappointed. It gets the score it deserves.