Building comparison
head to head
Castlevania II: Simon's QuestvsPortal
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest asks more than Portal, and the gap is variance.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Optimization · Pure Optimization
An infamously cryptic NES adventure where lying villagers obscure how to break Dracula's curse.
Portal
Optimization · Pure Optimization
The portal-gun puzzle game whose solutions are everything.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest leans Optimization (Pure Optimization); Portal leans Optimization (Pure Optimization).
Castlevania II: Simon's QuestPortal
Axis by axis
Execution4 vs 4
Same score on execution - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Modest whip combat; day-night enemies.
Portal
Portal placement timing modest.
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
No adaptive opposition.
Portal
No adversary modeling player.
Variance4 vs 0
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest leans clearly harder on variance.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Deliberately false villager clues hide the real path.
Portal
Deterministic chambers; no randomness.
Optimization7 vs 8
Portal leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Once decoded, it is pure item-and-route knowledge.
Portal
Pure puzzle-solving optimization.
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.