History YMMV / CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin

* EvilIsSexy:
** Stella whose dress sports prominently cleavage that bares her head-sized breasts. [[spoiler:And she turns out to be a subversion, as she still wears that even when she's good.]]
** Likewise, [[MsFanservice Astarte]], the boss of [[BuildLikeAnEgyptian Sandy Grave]] [[NephariousPharaoh that's based on]] [[TruthInTelevision a real life deity]], ain't half bad either. She is garbed in what can basically be described as a [[{{Stripperific}} golden bikini]], [[SupermodelStrut constantly struts her stuff]] and [[HartmanHips shakes her hips]] during battle, has lovely tanned skin, and a surprisingly deep yet sexy voice. [[DistractedByTheSexy Even Jonathan thinks she's beautiful]], and that's when he ''isn't'' [[CharmPerson charmed by her.]] What's '''not''' to love?

** The BonusBoss fight against the Whip's Memory, [[spoiler:a copy of the last Belmont to use the Vampire Killer, namely [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaRondoOfBlood Richter Belmont]]. It's here you see why he's regarded as one of the strongest Belmonts in the series.]] Defeating it unseals the Vampire Killer's [[InfinityPlusOneSword true power]].

** Likewise, [[MsFanservice Astarte]], the boss of [[BuildLikeAnEgyptian Sandy Grave]] [[NephariousPharaoh that's based on]] [[TruthInTelevision a real life deity]], ain't half bad either. She is garbed in what can basically be described as a [[{{Stripperific}} golden bikini]], [[SexyWalk constantly struts her stuff]] and [[HartmanHips shakes her hips]] during battle, has lovely tanned skin, and a surprisingly deep yet sexy voice. [[DistractedByTheSexy Even Jonathan thinks she's beautiful]], and that's when he ''isn't'' [[CharmPerson charmed by her.]] What's '''not''' to love?

** The UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo setting isn't used to its full potential. There are no Nazis dabbling in [[{{Ghostapo}} the supernatural]] or with [[StupidJetpackHitler super-science]], or [[{{Magitek}} both]]. Given Dracula's AsLongAsThereIsEvil shtick, it could have been an interesting team-up (ala [[VideoGame/ReturnToCastleWolfenstein Heinrich I and the SS Division]]). (Though this might be justified by the game taking place in 1944, one year before the war's end — the Third Reich was on its last legs.) To compare, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines'' is set in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and takes you on a tour of Europe for its six stages.

** Death has a particular attack where he summons four hands to grab your player character. If you get grabbed, the hands will make sure your character won't be able to do anything and you need to summon your partner and make sure s/he takes one of the hands down, else it's a OneHitKill.

** Stella whose dress sports AbsoluteCleavage that bares her head-sized breasts. [[spoiler:And she turns out to be a subversion, as she still wears that even when she's good.]]

** There's an Axe Armor mode, but no John Morris/Eric Lecarde mode, despite this game being a sequel to [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines their game]]. And/or even a ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse'' mode, since the sprites for the player characters in that game (except for Alucard) are in this game but used for bosses (recycled from ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight Symphony of the Night]]'').

** [[FrankensteinsMonster The Creature]] alone isn't actually too hard, with [[MightyGlacier hard-hitting but easily telegraphed attacks.]] It's when you meet [[DualBoss two of him]] in the Nest of Evil that shit hits the fan: You can't reliably predict what one of them will do because the other is off screen or surrounding you, about to sucker punch you. You also can't stand on the corner of the room and bait only one of them because both start acting as soon as you enter the room. It's inevitable that one of these will land a few chunks on you even if you use Dark Rift to absorb all of their projectiles and if you don't, there's a fat chance you'll be beaten a few good times across and had to spend a bunch of healing items trying to keep yourself alive.
*** The worst part? This is the FIRST room of this floor. This is followed instantly by a floor with '''NINE Cave Trolls''', two Double Axe Armors and an Iron Golem, and finally two rooms with a bunch of fast moving enemies just to chip the precious last bits of your health away. To put the icing on the cake, the boss of this gauntlet is [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Abbadon]], which can be a lot trickier than the other Nest of Evil final encounters if you don't know how to deal with his locusts correctly.
*** 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 you, especially if you are doing a no damage run where abusing the NotCompletelyUseless Clear Skies spell is almost mandatory. And you can forget trying to beat these two if you're playing on Level 1.

* MemeticBadass: [[spoiler:If previous games haven't shown how badass Richter is already, here, he can still kick your ass as a memory being imprinted in the Vampire Killer. Not the real him, mind you, just a fragment of his memory.]]

** The UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo setting isn't used to its full potential. There are no Nazis dabbling in [[{{Ghostapo}} the supernatural]] or with [[StupidJetpackHitler super-science]], or [[{{Magitek}} both]]. Given Dracula's AsLongAsThereIsEvil shtick, it could have been an interesting team-up (ala [[VideoGame/ReturnToCastleWolfenstein Heinrich and the SS Division]]). (Though this might be justified by the game taking place in 1944, one year before the war's end — the Third Reich was on its last legs.) To compare, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines'' is set in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and takes you on a tour of Europe for its six stages.

** The UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo setting isn't used to its full potential. There are no Nazis dabbling in [[{{Ghostapo}} the supernatural]] or with [[StupidJetpackHitler super-science]], or [[{{Magitek}} both]]. Given Dracula's AsLongAsThereIsEvil shtick, it could have been an interesting team-up. (Though this might be justified by the game taking place in 1944, one year before the war's end — the Third Reich was on its last legs.) To compare, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines'' is set in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and takes you on a tour of Europe for its six stages.

** The Doppelganger from the Nest of Evil is the final encounter of the whole area and supposedly the boss to end all bosses, but it is a cakewalk compared to what you fought all the way to get to them, especially when you are playing as Johnathan and Charlotte, where the Doppelganger randomly takes the form of one of them and uses their currently equipped weapons and sub-weapons/magic the moment they enter its room, but it can't change weapons unlike you. One can easily cheese it by equipping nothing on both characters, enter the room then set them back; it will just blindly throw punches and rendered entirely crippled. Even if you don't cheese it this way or playing as Richter or Maria, it's still easy to avoid its attacks as long as you don't bring any particularly annoying or dangerous sub-weapons or magic into its room, and any sub-weapons it uses are never Mastered.

** The Cave Trolls in the Nest of Evil are a step up from their ''Symphony of the Night'' versions; one of these will do around 200 on average with their tongue whip attack and their electric field will kill you in SECONDS. Even worse, later on there is a floor with nine of these and attempting to take all of them at once is death sentence. The only good thing is that they will not attack unless you attack them or go close enough to them, so even when they appear in numbers you can pick them off one at a time.

** The Cave Trolls in the Nest of Evil are a step up from their ''Symphony of the Night'' versions; one of these will do around 200 on average with their tongue whip attack and their electric field will kill you in SECONDS. Even worse, later on there is a floor with nine of these and attempting to take all of them at once is death sentence. The only good thing is that they will not attack instantly when you enter the room they are in, so even when they appear in numbers you can pick them off one at a time.

** [[FrankensteinsMonster The Creature]] alone isn't actually too hard, with [[MightyGlacier hard-hitting but easily telegraphed attacks.]] It's when you meet [[DualBoss two of him]] in the Nest of Evil that shit hits the fan: You can't reliably predict what one of them will do because the other is off screen or surrounding you, about to sucker punch you. You also can't stand on the corner of the room and bait only one of them because both start acting as soon as you enter the room. It's inevitable that one of these will land a few chunks on you even if you use Dark Rift to absorb all of their projectiles.
*** The worst part? This is the FIRST room of this floor. This is followed instantly by a floor with '''NINE Cave Trolls''', two Double Axe Armors and an Iron Golem, and finally two rooms with a bunch of fast moving enemies just to chip the precious last bits of your health away. To put the icing on the cake, the boss of this gauntlet is [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Abbadon]], which can be a lot trickier than the other Nest of Evil final encounters if you don't know how to deal with the locusts correctly.