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Fullmetal Alchemist: DS Impressions

.hacked

Member
Fullmetal Alchemist Dual Sympathy
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Let me start out by saying I am a huge FMA fan so keep that in mind.


This is one hell of a game, just might be the best NDS game yet. The meat of the game is made up of side scrolling beat'um up levels like you would find in Final Fight or Streets of Rage. You play as Ed by default with Al following you (he acts on his own) but on occasion you split up and control each brother separately. Each of the brothers have a simple combo setup. Nothing fancy but it works well enough in combination with the alchemic powers.


Both Al and Ed can call up a canon or a barrier at any time. These powers need to be recharged and while I am not 100% sure yet it seems like the more enemies you kill the more times you can use these powers. There are also location specific alchemic powers (i.e. making a weight to keep bad guys from popping out of a trap door), and I am sure there will be many more surprises as the game progresses.

At the end of each stage there is a touch screen puzzle. These range from connecting dots, drawing alchemy circles or untying knots. You have a time limit to get the task done and so far they have been very entertaining.

Graphics are very good, lots of animation and cut scenes stills right from the anime. There are even digitized voices!

Game is pretty import friendly so far, story mode follows the show so it is easy to keep up with what is going on. I will defiantly preorder this one if it gets a US release.

I give it a 4/5

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That looks pretty good! Reminds me of Final Fight, and that's a good thing.

A great anime cash-in game? Who'd a thunk it?
 
Damn, that does sound pretty cool. Thanks for the impressions
 
c'mon square, we need some good fma games out here, I've had enough of the ps2 ones

EDIT: oh, nvm, I thought this one was published by S-E too, has bandai said anything about this game being localized?
 
It seems like I've been spending more on import games than domestic recently. =/ I just bought Ouendan and the Twinkle Star remake, and now this is tempting me. Sigh... poor wallet.
 
I have strong doubts thisll come stateside.. the FMA games from SEnix are bombing arent they? Thats not much motivation for Bandai, though anime based games tend to do better on handhelds then consoles.
 
well, that sounds okay. maybe I'll add it to the next play-asia order.
 
I believe it is just single player.


Game must be on the short side, I already got to the mid point
where Ed and Al are flashing back to the island eps 27
and I don't want to play much more because that is as far as I have seen in the anime.

There must be unlockable touch screen games because looking through the instructions I see an arm wrestling game and in story mode I am past where that should have happened.

Maybe it is time to hit old Gamefaqs to see if someone is working on a translation guide.
 
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