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This hack is pretty awesome honestly! I love Bloodlines, and Morris and Lecarde are two of my favorite Castlevania characters, but it feels just a bit too bare bones of a change.

It's a fresh change to the vanilla extra characters, especially seeing Getsu Fuma in there lol, but I think more could've been done. New music tracks from Bloodlines, new SFX even, or just something else reminiscent of both Bloodlines and Getsu Fuma Den would've amplified this by a lot. Great, great hack for what it's simply meant to do, however!

Although there're no changes towards the map it's not a serious loss as the original map just feels right. The addition of Bloodlines hero tag is great!

But this hack still can't avoid its own problems. In Fuma's Level 1 cap campaign it's so impossible to push the crushing hands back without knowing a certain setup; even If you happened to know such setup - either after suffering 30 or more deaths or get hinted like me - it's still a dreadful first experience - because the only known method to counter the move in question is just so unreliable and fails so often. Fuma's doppelganger suffers similarly due to Fuma's pitiful normal range and his spell sub weapon being too fast. And Good luck finding a solution to Nest of Evil floor 2 in Fuma Level 1 cap.

If there's a next update that gets the margins of error tweaked to a more generally reasonable level it would be grateful. (Like raising the attack power of Fuma's regular slash a bit more?)

Though this hack is way less ambitious, it reminds me of the Harmony of Dissonance hack "Revenge of the Fin de Siecle," where you can play as Julius in Harmony of Dissonance. John Morris in Portrait of Ruin, just like Julius in Harmony, just feels right. Also, just like in Harmony, I way prefer the 'alternate character mode' over the main game. "John Morris mode" is how to play Portrait of Ruin.

UPDATE: There's two things I notice, though. One is that some enemies get petrified by Morris' regular attack. This strikes me as a bit odd, since that allows you to cheese pretty strong enemies early on. Another thing is that I reached the final boss at level 37, which is quite low. While other bosses have been beatable pretty easily, the final boss is real tough. Not sure if this was thought out. I've never beaten the original Portrait before, so I honestly don't know how different this is.

UPDATE 2: Morris' "glass cannon" nature allows you to reach the final bosses quite quickly. The final bosses are hard to tackle at level 30. Only with Simon's Cross could I get to the second form of the fight. I believe the issue here is that Morris' range and his whip's Stone attribute allows him to tear through some of the harder enemies easier, which makes the trek to the final boss go by way faster than in a normal Richter run. The creator of this hack intends to update his work, though, so this should be addressed in the next version.

Portrait of Ruin not having John Morris as a bonus playable character was such a missed opportunity, but now it's actually here, although missing his partner Eric sadly enough. But I assume it's because of the lack of a redone sprite sheet for him or Maria not exactly playing too well with being replaced by Eric.

Nevertheless John can now partake in destroying Castlevania a second time along with Simon (Kind of a lame choice) and Getsu Fuma which is actually pretty cool.

Edit: After playing some more, I've noticed a few things that should be pointed out. John's whip is based on the super charged one from his original game, but his range and blast is quite bigger compared to both his original game appearance and the character he replaces (Richter). This isn't a problem in reality, I just find it as too much personally.

Although my next find is quite a visual issue in terms of the sprite sheet used for John. In the original game, his energy blast whip when used can be seen light up on his hand all the way up to when the blast is fired which makes the hit all the more exciting and powerful to the one playing. But here in the first frames where the whip is being used there is no charging light up on his hands as his blast is just automatically seen afterwards with no build up, missing the mark quite a bit on making the whip feel great. (Papa John as his mode's title is quite funny, but if there was an update that added Eric I would want it to be called something else, minor nitpick)

This mod is absolutely amazing!!! Adding 8bit Simon and John Morris is exactly what we needed back in 2006! Don't get me wrong, it was cool playing as Richter and Maria, but they served no true purpose to a Bloodlines sequel, except the Whips Memory. Even then it should've been John Morris. But now it feels more like a sequel and an anniversary celebration! The only thing that would really make it complete is putting some classic Bloodlines tracks in or Vampire Killer at least lol! But well done! You made this Castlevania fan happy!