Nintendo DS NintendoSpin.com / Reviews / Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy

Posted on August 3rd, 2007 - 1803 Reads

Rated Teen Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy Nintendo DS Review

-- Written by Clark Nielsen



 If you don't have the patience to sit through the entire series of Fullmetal Alchemist, then maybe a two-hour DS game will interest you. But to find anything interesting in Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is like trying to lead a horse to water and not only make it drink but also juggle flaming bowling pins. It isn't going to happen. Dual Sympathy takes the entire Fullmetal story and crams it into a game too short to sustain the drama. In this approach, the story loses much of what makes it fun, as it just becomes confusing to anyone who hasn't already seen the show. Your best bet is to skip the cut scenes and get right to playing. But this leaves you with very little actual game in the end.

Dual Sympathy can be beaten in under two hours. And that's if you're not even trying. There are only ten stages, all very short and very easy. Dual Sympathy is primarily a beat-'em-up, after all, one that rewards button mashing. Nay, button mashing is how this game is. Other brawlers manage to keep things interesting by giving you multiple ways to dispose of enemies. Here, you have only one button for only one punch. You can't even grab and throw enemies. You can, however, call on two alchemy spells at any time. One will bring forth a canon to blast away nearby enemies or obstacles. The other creates a small wall in front of you. This wall, dare I say, actually serves some creative purposes. It can act as a shield against machine guns or a stepping stone to cross a pit of spikes.

But forget I said anything nice about this game. Forget it! As is the beat-'em-up tradition, things get pretty monotonous and repetitive early on. The game's crowning achievement--using walls to build a bridge--is used over and over to the point where it's no longer clever. Many rooms feel like shameful repeats, and the monsters and bad guys that populate them don't change by much, either. Only the boss battles manage to differentiate themselves and present any kind of a challenge. Beating a boss relies on contextual alchemy spells, things that temporarily weaken them so you can bust their chops. Oh. Wait. Maybe that isn't so original.

Between and during some levels, though, there are brief touch screen minigames. These include such exciting tasks as sliding blocks of wood across the screen and tapping buttons as they light up. Seriously, they're dumb and would have worked better without touch control (or just not have been in the game at all, please). However, there is one recurring game that has you draw (trace) a transformation circle before time runs out. It isn't challenging or hard, but it fits the game's theme and is a glimmer that somebody in the design office was feeling good that day.

Yet another designer was feeling generous when he/she dished out the bonus content. For sticking through all two hours of gameplay, you get plenty of artwork, music, voice clips, a fortune-telling cow, and a character-based alarm clock. Uh.... dubious prizes, for sure. Of the extras, the most interesting is something called Character Mode. It's the same as Story Mode but lets you play as somebody besides Edward. Unfortunately, Story Mode wasn't that great to begin with, and playing as Alphonse or Mustang presents nothing new.

Final Comments:
It's easy to pick on a game where everything is broken, where nothing seems to work right. But this game felt like it didn't do anything. It is so short and so easy, you may question whether or not you actually played something. Fans of the anime will be the ones who get anything out of Dual Sympathy, because the story will actually mean something to them. But even they should proceed with caution. The only bit of alchemy to be ascertained from this product is: oversimplified beat-em-'up + lame touch screen minigames + choppy and hacked-up story = garbage. Serves no one.

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