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So there was a new Portrait of Ruin demo at the San Diego Comic-Con. In addition to there being more ground to cover than in the E3 build, the menu screen and equipment management were implemented, and the quality of the music was drastically improved. GameVideos and IGN have got some footage.
Also: a highly brief Igarashi interview and the revelation of some new artwork.
I was a little sad when I found out that the second protagonist on screen was not being controlled by another human player cooperatively via wi-fi, however, this is definitely my most anticipated DS title aside from Final Fantasy III. I already consider Dawn of Sorrow to be probably the best in the series, I can't wait to see where Portrait of Ruin will take it from here.
New screenshots and artwork have been culled from a recent issue of Famitsu. And not that it matters to any of us, but the same issue also pegged the game's Japanese release date as November 16.
Some highlights.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...vaniapor/2.jpg
Here's our first look at the status display that appears in the top screen as the action progresses on the touch screen. At the top are what appear to be the active character's stats, any stat bonuses gained from his or her current equipment, and then the support character's stats. Below that are the character's weapon and subweapon--in this case Tetsu no Muchi ("Iron Whip") and Rampage (no idea)--as well as a third icon that I don't believe we've seen before and whose purpose is hence unknown.
Edit: Maybe the third icon is where the elemental properties of your equipped weapon or subweapon are marked? I don't know.
At the very bottom is your condensed bestiary showing the last enemy you touched, looking similar to how it appeared in DoS except for a few refinements: each item an enemy can yield now appears to have its own rarity rating, and you can now view the enemy's HP, how much experience it's worth, and how many of them you've already killed. This is more than helpful considering HP and experience stats were completed absent even from DoS's fullscale bestiary.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...vaniapor/4.jpg
See that little diamond icon between the HP/MP bars and the character icons? Yeah, I still don't know what that thing's for.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...vaniapor/5.jpg http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...vaniapor/6.jpg
Another first look, this is what the girls call a conversation scene--probably one of the game's opening dialogues considering where it takes place. The portraits are looking good, and that figure on the right may be Brauner, the game's main antagonist.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...vaniapor/7.jpg http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...vaniapor/8.jpg
Here's an example of the kind of puzzles you'll have to manage with the character-switching mechanic: hop on the statue as Charlotte, switch to Jonathan to push it into the proper position, then switch back to Charlotte to leap to higher ground. Yes, in addition to slaying the undead minions of the Lord of Darkness, the Castlevania series now allows you to rock it like Ico and Yorda.
Like the conversation scene (and prettymuch all of these shots, really), this is likely to play out close to the beginning of the game, since the tileset appears to be native to the first area of the castle as seen in demo footage, and since the characters obviously don't have the double-jump ability yet.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...aniapor/10.jpg
There's nothing special going on here, but...just look at that setup, man! I'm overjoyed to see this game's designers returning to an ideal that was prevalent in Symphony of the Night but sort of drifted to the wayside as the series continued--specifically, to make the game's environments appear and function as actual physical locations would, as opposed to just having a bunch of platforms hanging in midair as they would in a game like Super Mario Bros. Additionally, the sheer amount of detail and style invested in the graphics appear to be well beyond what we saw for the majority of DoS. I guess what I am saying here is that Portrait of Ruin is all set to be a very pretty game, guys.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...apor/art02.jpg http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...apor/art03.jpg
Here's that artwork I mentioned. If you look at the artwork from when the game was first revealed, you can see it's been revised quite a bit.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/...apor/art01.jpg
Oh, no! Zombies ate Jon's legs! =O
Mario & Luigi: Portrait of Ruin, anyone?
A metric ton of new video game material was released today from the Leipzig Game Conference--so much, in fact, that it completely overshadowed Konami's own Summer BBQ event. They may want to schedule that thing more carefully next year. Fortunately, the gaming press nevertheless made it a priority to collect a great deal of new videos, screenshots, and information regarding Portrait of Ruin.
GameSpot
Videos
Screenshots
Preview
GameSpot has the latest official trailer as well as four gameplay videos from the latest demo build. Many new environments can be seen, and even areas that were featured in past builds have now been spruced up with additional graphical details, enemies, and items. Even the instrumentation in the soundtrack has been tweaked yet again since Comic-Con. GameSpot also has a handful of new screenshots, one of which shows of the game's two-player cooperative mode.
GS's preview expands upon storyline details and gameplay systems that were hinted at when Portrait was first revealed last April, most notably pertaining to Wind, the aformentioned "ghost from the past war." In addition to acquiring items and equipment from exploration and purchasing them from the resident merchant, Wind will provide you with unique spoils provided you go out and perform certain tasks for him throughout the game world. While ultimately boiling down to a series of fetch quests, it does add a new element to occupy the player while navigating Dracula's castle and Brauner's paintings.
Another exciting revelation from the BBQ is that, if the trailer is any indication, the game has been given full English voice acting--a treatment not received by a 2D game in this series since Symphony of the Night back in '97. Rest assured that Portrait's voiceovers are much more competent than Symphony's infamous rush job, though.
IGN
IGN has the same screenshots as GameSpot except with an instrusive "IGN.COM" watermark emblazoned upon each one. But you can get the BBQ trailer in .mov format if you're into that kind of thing.