Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Death: You will not touch Lord Dracula! This time, let's fight for real!

  • Crowning Moment of Funny: In the good ending, Jon, Charlotte, Stella, and Loretta run to search for Vincent in the castle ruin, not knowing he IS the one chasing after them.
    • The Sisters Mode. Killing an enemy by drawing a cross with your pen??? BWAHAHAHAHA...!!!
    • The Zacchino enemy will go up to any female character (and Old Axe Armor) and immediately declare his love for them. If you turn around, he'll say "Don't reject me!"
  • Evil Is Sexy: Stella is an Elegant Gothic Lolita whose dress sports Absolute Cleavage that bares her head-sized breasts. And she turns out to be a subversion, as she still wears that even when she's good.
  • Game Breaker: Sisters mode is incredibly easy for two reasons: the sisters float and hover in the air (at the cost of MP), and their method of attack is entirely done by the touchscreen. Stella does physical attacks by rubbing the stylus over, while Loretta launches a barrage of ice magic where the stylus is placed. With Loretta, even ice-resistant enemies fall in seconds (save for mage-type enemies). Attacking also consumes MP, but on the ground they recover it quickly. They're also immune to all status ailments. Of course, you have to beat the game just to unlock the mode to play as the sisters first, so there's not much of the game left to break.
    • Charlotte can learn a spell called Ice Needles that is bought early on in the game. Because of its fast cast rate, multiple "needles", low mana cost, and high damage, it's incredibly useful for taking out rooms of enemies with ease, even late into the game. Later in the game, Chain Lightning can be gained, doing huge damage to every enemy onscreen when fully charged.
    • Similar to the Charlotte example above, Jonathan can buy the Shuriken subweapon really early in the game, and you'll almost never need another one. It's easy to master, and when mastered it basically obliterates anything in front of or below you.
    • The fully powered Vampire Killer, while not the strongest weapon by any stretch, is ridiculously good due to the typical speed and range of the whip combined with a high enough attack power and holy/flame elemental , especially when the special attack is used. This does huge damage to many enemies. Other stronger weapons are often much slower and their specials aren't as good.
  • Disc One Nuke: There's quite a few, actually, in addition to the Shuriken and Ice Needles mentioned above.
    • The humble Long Spear. A weapon as strong as the fully-powered Vampire Killer (ignoring the other benefits the whip has), but it's the common drop of the Armor Knight, which you can meet in large quantities as early as the second portrait! It will probably last you until you get the True Vampire Killer.
    • The Heaven's Sword, which you can get in the 3rd portrait. It has great range and can hit multiple times, not to mention that a jump-cancelling technique allows you to spam them really easily. You can easily laugh your way through the first fight with Stella with this weapon.
    • The Medusa Whip, also found as early as the 3rd portrait. Mediocre in terms of pure attack power, but anything weak to Earth will be petrified with a hit from this (with any hits afterwards doing double damage), making a lot of nasty enemies later on trivial.
  • Good Bad Bugs: You can duplicate quest rewards for early access to the Holy Claymore. You can also glitch the vampire sisters with a deft usage of Clear Skies, freezing them in place for the entire remainder of the battle.
  • Memetic Mutation: JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE! JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE!
  • Nightmare Fuel: The Legion - heavily subverted thank to the overly bright atmosphere of the boss music...
    • Don't forget that in one of the miniquests, you have to get a tear located near a certain statue. When you take it....... *Shudder*
  • The Scrappy: Vincent's refusal to lower his prices (even after being cured of vampirism) has gained him some scrappy status. He's still far more likable than his Lords of Shadow namesake, though.
  • That One Boss: Frankenstein's Monster isn't actually too hard, with hard-hitting but easily telegraphed attacks. It's when you meet two of him in the Nest of Evil that fit hits shan. You can reliably predict what one of them will do because the other is off screen or surrounding you, about to sucker punch you. Abusing the Not Completely Useless Clear Skies spell is almost mandatory here. The worst part? This is the FIRST room of this floor. The boss at the end of the floor? Abaddon.
    • You can just try to survive against the Creatures for sixty seconds, at which point the door to the next room will open whether they're beaten or not. Not that this is much easier, mind.
    • And you can forget trying to beat these two if you're playing with any of the alternate characters.
    • The purification of Stella and Loretta, where casting Sanctuary takes 15 seconds and Charlotte cannot get hit during it or it fails, nor can she go offscreen, and if either character gets hit, that's like a 3KO, and it's even worse on Hard mode. Trying to do this at low levels can make it pretty much a Luck-Based Mission. Stonewall is your friend here.
      • Worse? Sanctuary has a range of one screen-width with Charlotte as the center. Since you'll be playing as Jonathan keeping the sisters to one side so Charlotte doesn't get hit, it's possible for the spell to miss.
      • One saving grace is that you only need to hit one of the sisters with it for it to work.
    • Death can also have shades of this, being Death and all.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Brauner believes Stella and Loretta are his daughters reincarnated, but this is never explored and we don't get any confirmation for one way or the other.
    • Of course, it might've just been put in to show how insane he is.