Castlevania PoR is pretty cool. At first it was same old, same old and was pretty damn dull. I was just waltzing through the enviroments like no one's business, and then I died. Surprisingly the game is balanced in difficulty.
And then, as I progressed it starts to get better, with new features getting unlocked one by one. Since I was on media black out for the game, I didn't know how it'd all work. All I knew is that there was an extra character, but I didn't know anything about how it'd work. It handles beautifully. You solve puzzles and crap, and it surprisingly brings a lot of new stuff to a tired and old formula.
You can summon another character out and aid you in fights. This is really cool because it doubles your arsenal. You have special abilities, your partner has special abilities, you can learn specialized combo attacks even, you use eachother to solve puzzles... it works really well. Another thing is that it makes the game a lot easier and you can take out moderately strong enemies out with a few hits. What really brings the game's charm out is fighitng solo. Balancing between fighting solo and playing with your partner is a lot of fun.
Oh, and portraits add another new kick to the standard formula. Nice game. I've played about 30 minutes so far, so we'll see how it goes from there but it's Castlevania, and as we know Castlevania kicks ass.
So far it's definitely more pleasant than the mind numbingly disappointing Dawn of Sorrow, which was basiaclly Aria of Sorrow 1.5. One thing I hated about that game was the enviroments. You had cars in the castle, and stuff and it didn't feel unified or even feel like it was a CV enviroment. PoR changes this for the better.
Can't comment on the music so far unfortunately, but the portraits and art are awful. I really hope they get this anime shit out of Castlevania, because it's terrible. They even have those anime like faces when someone says something silly. Like >: (. I don't want that in CV, honestly. It feels out of place.
