Faded

I really liked Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, back in 2006. But its Dominus Collection remaster doesn't have the same impact today.

Portrait of Ruin's got a lot of content, in terms of geography and running length; this castle and its portraits' sub-maps include plenty of ground to cover. The disconnected-ness of those sub-maps, though, highlights how linear the game really is: a section of the castle is followed by a portrait, then another section of castle, then another portrait, then another section of castle...

An interconnected Metroidvania map can give players a feeling of freedom, of self-directed agency, when it lets you get lost in one of multiple branching routes; it can at least give the illusion of agency when it teases out-of-reach paths for you to revisit with later abilities. But the straight-line path through Portrait of Ruin's world has so little freedom, and so few of those future-ability teases, that the map hardly feels interconnected at all.

Portrait of Ruin also eschews Soma Cruz's soul-collection mechanic, playing more like his games' character-swapping "Julius Mode" -- one character (Jonathan) handles whips and swords and hammers, another (Charlotte) can summon fire and lightning and ice shards. Which works, but isn't quite as exciting as mixing-and-matching your own wacky combination of soul abilities.

What's "cool," or at least was cool a couple decades ago, is that while controlling one character you can let the game fight automatically as the other. The benefits of that computer-controlled partnership are very limited though: they don't position themselves very well, and they become incapacitated fairly easily. Outside of combat they're in the way more often than they're helpful; a "jump on your partner's shoulders" move is pretty sweet, but there aren't any other team-up mobility moves like it.

And although Portrait of Ruin's equipment-collection grind is comparable to Soma's souls, it doesn't feel as satisfying because... item drops and skill-point counters aren't all that related to the monsters you're killing. Or to put it another way, in the Sorrow games each monster felt like an opportunity to get some specific power, while Portrait of Ruin's monsters feel like meaningless fodder.

Portrait of Ruin is a perfectly serviceable hack-and-slash action RPG, and there's an impressive amount of stuff to do in it. But the quality of that stuff is a bit lacking; the map isn't interesting to explore, your ability customization options are limited, and without monster-specific souls to collect, the enemies all kind-of blend together.

Aria and Dawn of Sorrow held up surprisingly well in their remakes, but revisiting this game has unfortunately spoiled my fond memories of it.

Progress: gave up in the Sandy Grave.