"Too much text for so little action!!"

This game gives the constant feeling that it was made to be watched, and not played! It is supposed to be a beat-em-up game, but most scenes of Full Metal Alchemist won't do that genre, so they decided to convert it to text. You will see fulls episodes converted to boring, text only narration. After, say, 15 minutes of text, you get a 3 minutes long level to play. And then, more and more text again!

The graphics used in the game are good. However, they could be easily performed by a GBA. You also have some nice music and dubbed voices. And the American voice actors did an exceptional good work in the US version of this game!

The game has a few puzzles which will either make you bored or just keep you away from the action. You will be stuck in puzzles where all you need to pass is to know what the programmers were thinking when they placed that obstacle or trap there! And you'll be seeing more puzzles than enemies. Actually, the only thing you'll see more than the puzzles is the text narration!

The big addition of the game is being able to use transmutations with the touch screen. You can touch the center of the lower screen to select a chemistry book (each one features a certain characters' techniques....for instance, Roy Mustang's book features his flame attack) and then touch the icon for the transmutation you want. However, each book gives you only ONE new transmutation! But that doesn't matter at all, as the game isn't long enough to make you bored because of this!

Also, Full Metal Alchemist Dual Sympathy suffers from a pain of several Nintendo DS games: stupid touch screen mini-games! Companies shouldn't use the touch screen if they don't know what to do with it! The mini-games are just random and they feel like they could not think of anything better to do to prevent a few more text story!

So, if you like reading better than playing, this game is for you. Otherwise, don't let your passion for FMA speak louder!

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 04/02/07