Ruin of Portrait

I find this to be such a mixed bag compared to the previous entries. On one hand adding an AI companion is a fresh idea, which was sorely needed after so many games repeating the same formula with slight iterations (especially after DoS doing almost exactly what AoS did, only worse), on the other hand this system is quite underwhelming in its execution.

Charlotte is pretty dumb and doesn't really help out with anything you couldn't handle yourself, but the game still often forces you to switch to her on certain bosses, which figuring that out through trial and error is a frustrating experience. Especially with the Stella and Loretta boss fight where you have to rely on AI to take over Jonathan while you're casting a long-ass spell. You can switch to Jonathan, but if you move a little away from Charlotte, the dumb bitch will teleport and break the cast. But it's kinda pointless anyway because you can't deflect any boss attacks. I think they eventually glitched out because they just stuck in a place and weren't moving, which is what allowed me to win that battle. But this is worse than the magic seal bullshit from the previous game.

I think trading the soul system of AoS and DoS for this was a big mistake. Luck became a much less relevant stat now, and you feel much less incentive to actually fight new enemies when you don't have to. With that, a lot of power-ups have disappeared that in the previous games helped combat some of the more annoying enemies. For example, in SotN, the Bible power-up was great at protecting you from respawning medusas. In DoS Quetzlcoatl helps with that enormously and is generally a much more useful companion than Charlotte is. There's nothing in this game that serves that function. This bitch won't even cast any spells on her own, which is ridiculous, considering how her melee attacks are severely underpowered because she's a magician. So she's tagging along doing mostly nothing and dying repeatedly (thankfully that doesn't end the game).

What is supposed to be THE mechanic that saves the tired formula from stagnation, ends up feeling more like a gimmick, leaving you to essentially experience the same old SotN gameplay, except with worse weapon/spell selection, more micromanagement and the immature anime artstyle that ruins the gothic atmosphere of the previous titles.

Portrait of Ruin is not a bad game and overall it's probably still more mechanically pleasant than Harmony of Dissonance, but HoD was an earlier project that came out at the time when the formula was still relatively new and offered something for the handhelds that didn't exist in that form-factor yet. Furthermore, barring its dual-castle level design mindfuck, there was really nothing wrong with it, and it was an overall much more focused and distilled project. PoR, on the other hand, feels like the result of an oncoming identity crisis. It's desperately trying to satisfy the old fans by sticking to a proven formula, while dumbing down the artstyle to capture a younger audience, and is afraid to make truly fundamental changes.

I think I got through half the game (certainly past the point of a bad ending), and I'm just bored of the gameplay loop I've already spent tens of hours in the previous games on. This is where the series (at least its 2D metroidvania entries) needs a major reinvention.