It's probably the best title in the huge Castlevania saga that finally got ported on the Nintendo DS. There's no console in the world that hasn't had the honor of hosting Konami's masterpiece and our favorite vampire hunting heroes are back, with the same manga hair-styles and the trademark whip that would make Indiana Jones jealous. You will be able to control two different characters: vampire hunter Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin, a young witch. Also, you can switch characters whenever you want or combine their powers into extremely powerful combos.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is a platform game with RPG stat-building elements. Similar to the Metroid series, certain areas are inaccessible until the player defeats key enemies and obtains critical items. Along the way, the player must defeat a horde of monsters that roam the various rooms of the castle with the weapons he or she finds along the way. The more enemies the player defeats and the stronger the enemy, the more experience points they get, which enables them to level up and improve their abilities. 

HINTS

Defeating Bosses

All the bosses, including Death and the vampire twins, like to use power hits when you’re cornered or stuck somewhere. Equip your characters with powerful items and weapons; your Attack, Strength, Defense, and Luck are more important when dealing with powerful enemies. For certain enemies and Bosses, control Charlotte for long range attacks while Jonathan does close range attacks. 

Stat boost on Jonathan

Choose Charlotte as your playable character. Equip her with the Str, Luck, Mind, Con, Int or All Boost, then call Jonathan as your teammate. Use one of the boosts (fully charged) with Charlotte, then become Jonathan and send Charlotte out (by pressing A if your commands are set to the default). Jonathan will retain the Boost (+60), instead of having the smaller boost (+30). This is useful when Charlotte is not strong enough to kill a monster and also when looking for rare items, such as the Eye Of Decay, Medusa Whip, or Summon Medusa spell.

Easy experience

Find a place where Bats keep respawning. Let Charlotte be your sidekick. She will automatically attack the bats while you do nothing. Have you DS on AC power and allow the game to idle like this to gain levels easily. Do this as many times as desired, but preferably near a save point.

Here's a video of this game: