Building comparison
head to head
Castlevania II: Simon's QuestvsPortal 2
Neither is simply harder - they are hard in different places. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest demands more variance; Portal 2 demands more optimization.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Optimization · Pure Optimization
An infamously cryptic NES adventure where lying villagers obscure how to break Dracula's curse.
Portal 2
Optimization · Pure Optimization
A first-person puzzle game where seeing the solution is the whole skill.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest leans Optimization (Pure Optimization); Portal 2 leans Optimization (Pure Optimization).
Castlevania II: Simon's QuestPortal 2
Axis by axis
Execution4 vs 3
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Modest whip combat; day-night enemies.
Portal 2
Portal placement requires some precision but timing is lenient.
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 2
No opponent; puzzles are static.
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 2
Puzzles are deterministic with no randomness.
Optimization7 vs 9
Portal 2 leans clearly harder on optimization.
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Once decoded, it is pure item-and-route knowledge.
Portal 2
Solving the puzzle's logic IS the entire game.
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.