Portrait of Ruin is certainly a step up from Dawn of Sorrow. They experimented with a lot of new things in this game and for the most part I think they all worked pretty well!

+ Partner system is done really well
+ The story is actually good!
+ I really liked the final boss! Great way to end a game
+ A lot of weapon variety, letting you use pretty much anything
+ Paintings have their flaws, but allow for a lot of new locations like Egyptian pyramids

~ A few catchy tunes, but the music is nowhere near as good as Dawn of Sorrow

- My least favorite version of Dracula's Castle so far
- Paintings make the castle feel a lot more divided, and are mostly linear
- Obvious filler towards the end of the game where you have to go through a sublevel for each painting
- The anime artstyle from Dawn of Sorrow remains and does NOT look good. Dracula especially looks like shit