Fullmetal Alchemist : Dual Sympathy DS is in essence an active version of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime. Fans of the show will love it - but people new to the world might become quite lost.



The gameplay is in essence a fighting game with some magic thrown in, wrapped up by a VERY dialogue intensive storyline. The main characters are a pair of brothers, one with metal parts, the other in a full robot body. They run into a series of bad guys that they need to take on. In each case as they move from room to room they tend to have to finish off all the bad guys they see before the room "releases" and allows them to move along to the next area. Big "GO" arrows help to guide the way.

The magic is often in the form of puzzles. Use walls to get over spikes. Use guns to take down enemies. You need to figure out which combination of spells will get you past the current obstacle.

I'm not religious, but religious people might have a problem with some of the dialogue, where the characters are ridiculing God and saying their science makes them God like creatures.

Also, a portion of what they say just makes no sense at all. I don't mean in a "suspension of disbelief" manner but in an actual "sentence A does not lead to sentence B" way.

Still, cartoons are not really meant to be evaluated seriously. They present an interesting world, give us some fun thoughts to ponder over, and show how characters learn and grow over time.

If I look at this game from the view of an anime fan who loves the series, the dialogue gets a bit excessive compared with gameplay. It scrolls by VERY slowly, and clicking doesn't help much. You are stuck ... reading ... at ... a ... snail's ... pace ... which drives me insane. They should have been able to handle that better.

And even given the really slow dialogue, the game itself is relatively short. So they almost were trying to beef out the game's length by talking really slowly.

I'll give it a 4/5 for avid game fans. They really should have gotten more gameplay and less tedious exposition.

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