System: Nintendo DS
Genre: Platformer
Castlevania Portrait of Ruin is a lot of peoples least favourite Castlevania game from the recent generations but I quite enjoyed it. I liked having the castle broken up into bite-sized chunks, it helped reduce the number of occurences of that "where the hell am I and where do I go next" feeling. It probably also helped that it's one of the easiest Castlevania games in recent times, since I've never been that good at them (although to be fair I did finish Super Castlevania IV and it's rock hard). It's also the only Castlevania where I went out of my way to unlock 100% of the map and do all the sidequests along the way, even the boss-rush coliseum type-thing. Ultimately it seems unfair to single out Portrait of Ruin though because I have enjoyed most of the DS and GBA Castlevanias (expect Circle of the Moon - too difficult in an annoying way).
