Fma dual sympathy

This is the first ever FMA game and this is also even the first time I have ever looked at the FMA series. I already covered Bat InThe Blue Sky by the same author. The FMA series was one of the first anime I have heard of outside of Dragon Ball, One Piece, Gundam, Bleach and the Transformers Unicron Trilogy series when I was still a kid. This game was developed by NATSUME and despite their history of casual farming titles they have released action oriented stuff like this game.

The gameplay is pretty simple; it’s a beat em up and you can use either alchemist or physical attacks. It covers the entire 51 episodes of the first series so its very condensed. It is played as a side scrolling fighting game with straight forward controls.

You play as Edward Elric and his brother Alphonse the main protagonists of the series. Edward and Alphonse are alchemists. The story was very fascinating but the abridged sections were very badly executed cutting off important plots and rushing story elements along the way.

The graphics and art style are really great and the sprites had decent animation. Cutscenes in the game are actually good quality screenshots of clips from the anime. The voice acting is sound bites from the show but the original voice cast reprise their roles like Vic Mignogna as Edward Elric. The audio quality for a mid 2000s DS game is generally good. Don't expect any multiplayer elements especially when the wi-fi for Nintendo was off. The game is short and can be beaten in a day or so. After you beat the game, you can also play as other FMA characters like Roy Mustang.

Theres an alarm clock mode where you can choose the character and what voice line you would like to use. I have never seen this feature in any DS or 3DS game I have played. Plenty of minigames based off scenes in the anime like arm wrestling can be played where you move the touch screen to the spot the arrow is pointing to win. It has a fortune telling system done by the bespectacled cow avatar Hiromu Arakawa which is basically a randomized good luck or bad luck feature from a FMA character. You can also listen to soundbites and music from the show.

For a DS game and especially one from 2006, it has a lot of extra content especially when you look at today’s DLC riddled games like the notorious Star Wars Battlefront 2. This was a good adaptation of a video game but fan of the anime will be disappointed with the super condensed storyline in the game.

It gets 4 stars out of 5.

I enjoyed this game and fans of the anime will like it too if they can get past the liberties take with the storylines.