"The first FMA game + gameplay - story = This game"

After playing the good but not great first FMA game, I had high hopes for the sequel. The final product, unfortunately, is a bit disappointing. The basic premise here is the same as FMA1: you play as the "Fullmetal Alchemist" Edward Elric and, accompanied always by his the armor-bound soul of his brother Alphonse, unknowingly get caught up in some huge and tragic ordeal which the boys must reluctantly diffuse. And, as before, you can often make use of Ed's talent in the art of alchemy to both fight enemies and get from place to place.

My #1 complaint about FMA1 was its atrociously slow fighting system, which made hacking through the bad guys a boring task. FMA2, thankfully, has completely overhauled the old system, leaving in its wake a much smoother and faster fighting system that not only works much better, but also looks more realistic. Ed has the basic combo of punches and kicks, but he can also chain it together with attacks from his trademark handblade or by making stone spikes erupt from the ground via alchemy. Also, the much-needed blocking function that was absent from the first game has been added, with a nifty counterattack ability to boot. As in FMA1, Ed can transmute many of the objects he finds into more useful ones. However, these have become far more exotic this time around, ranging from exploding mice to bottle rockets to throwing knives. There are two things here that still need work, though. Firstly, a lock-on function of some sort would make aiming long range weapons MUCH easier. Also, Al's AI hasn't improved at all.....in fact, it's gotten WORSE. At least in FMA1, Al had the sense to get out of the way when Ed manned a cannon or other heavy weaponry - a trait he doesn't demonstrate in this game.

Where the game really suffers, however, is in the story which, ironically enough, was FMA1's primary strength. The first 3 chapters (and the better part of the fourth) of the game follow storylines practically identical to the anime (even the dialog of many characters is ripped word-for-word from the show). The game tries so hard to accomplish this that it almost looks like an advertisement for the anime itself. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if it weren't for the fact that the game rushes through these chapters so fast that character development is almost nil. You meet Maes Hughes....he talks some....and you never see him again. You meet Scar....he fights you....and then disappears for the rest of the game. The only real improvement to the story is that voiceovers have now been added to ALL of the cutscenes, not just the anime sequences. Unfortunately, many of the better characters (like Scar and Hughes) do not have the same quality of voice acting as in the anime, though they are voiced by the same actors. When the game finally does get past the "true to anime" sections, the story does get much better, but by then you're already half way through the game, and the primary story ends up a little underdeveloped (though it does have a few bright points). The balance of humor and drama that made FMA1's story worthwhile has been lost, and instead the game is little heavy on the melodrama, which gets very old very fast (except Armstrong, who is always hilarious). Also, the story to fighting ratio is so ridiculously lopsided that it's easy to mistake this for a movie rather than a game.

If you combined the good qualities of both FMA games, you would have an outstanding game, but as it stands, it's simply a good one. A pretty good value at $40, made even better by the two anime episodes that come as a bonus (pretty good episodes, at that....though they won't mean a whole lot unless you're somewhat familiar with the show). A third game is in the works, and maybe it will bring out the full potential that this series has.

STORY - 5/10
GAMEPLAY - 8/10
VISUALS - 8/10
SOUND - 8/10
SWING - 7/10

OVERALL - 7.2/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/21/06