Japanese animation has always been a hell of an income for the Japanese when North American companies purchase the rights to air them in English. In fact, North America has already seen lots of animes take the world by storm including Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, and most recently – Yu-Gi-Oh! The latest cartoon said to be a craze in the next coming months is Fullmetal Alchemist, and with a few games out in Japan, Square Enix is looking to make some easy money while also bringing a new action RPG for their lineup this year with Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel. The game and anime is based on a sixteen-year-old genius alchemist named Edward Elric. Together with his younger brother Alphonse, the two tried to bring their mother back from the dead with the power of alchemy. It proved to be a huge mistake as they failed to remember that when using alchemy, it is required to have to sacrifice something of equal value. When doing this, Ed lost his left leg, and Al lost his entire body. After the accident, Ed sacrificed his right arm to save Al’s soul and put it in a suit of armor. So the Elrics are not in a favorable situation by any means, and to correct this, they’ll need the power of the Philosopher’s Stone. With that, the Elrics and their bodyguard Armstrong take the next train to Central City where worst eventually gets worse. After some long and detailed cutscenes, you’re immediately thrown into the heat of battle against a group of radicals. The three people in your party have different kinds of abilities, but it really isn’t that easy. In fact, while the battle system has some great moments, it’s definitely one of the must confusing and annoying battle systems in a while. The battle system is based on Alchemy—a proper balance of everything in the world. While it is used for different scientific sequences throughout the game’s main story, a lot of the gameplay you’ll experience out of combat will include using your abilities to “alchemize” all sorts of items that litter the game’s many environments. You’ll be using Edward throughout the whole game, and with the Circle button, you can cause a burst of power out of your mechanical body to alchemize things like signs, garbage cans, poles, and things of that nature to create deadly objects like new armor, cannons, and even swords. You can use each weapon sparingly with either of the X, Square, or Triangle trigger buttons. Being the Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed brings a lot of alchemy-based moves to the table. Basic alchemic abilities include Rockblockers and Stonespikes. Rockblockers are used for defense, as they are actually walls, which can guard against the enemy and can also confine them. The rockblocker also doubles as an object for beter footing during battles. With that, Ed can also create Stonespikes that are splinters to sweep the enemy. Eventually you’ll be able to combine this with basic attacks to fight enemies for some better chains. Most of the attacking will be swinging your arm like a sword, and that’s how most of the “combos” are created. While the battle system is definitely very interesting at first, almost everything about it will later on feel very repetitive and somewhat annoying. The other thing that makes the battle system so dull is that the enemies are all really stupid. The AI in this game is really brainless and take anything you can call difficult away from the game, obviously making this game ridiculously easy. It doesn’t include a lot of variety, and it can play a lot like any other mediocre action RPG on the market. Aside from using Al as a safeguard to protect your party, the battle system just doesn’t do anything to amaze you by adding very little variety at all. It pretty much plays like a broken Japanese version of X-Men Legends. At first glance, Fullmetal Alchemist can look visually flawless because of the scenes taken directly out of its anime counterpart. Other than that, the various streets, countrysides and other environments you go through look definitely clichéd and unoriginal, especially when being compared to other Square games. There’ll even be some unnecessary jags in some areas, making the game seem really basic. Aside from its many weaknesses, the characters look very well detailed and the animations of each character and enemy look pretty well done. Unlike its subpar visuals, the game really sounds good. There’ll be some techno-rock-esque music during gameplay, and that’s a lot more pleasing to the ear than the Japanese pop you may be expecting. The sound effects are okay, as they don’t try to do too much. Still, there is room for improvement. Fullmetal Alchemist also includes a pretty good cast of actors for the voices in the game. Of course, the game is based on an anime, so that’s to be expected. Even at that, once you get through with the game’s introduction, you’ll probably be fed up with what you have to hear from anybody in the game. Either way, people shouldn’t find the sound that bad at all. It’s not all great though, as there is only spoken dialog during the cutscenes, and there aren’t even that many to begin with in this short, unfulfilling game where sound is its best feature. Fullmetal Alchemist combines an interesting plot with an entertaining battle system. While that combination may sound like automatic quality, especially out of Square Enix, the game really doesn’t touch on any of it very well. The game does have its moments, and while it isn’t horrible by any means, it just doesn’t feel like a worthy title especially with the high quality RPG fans are used to seeing and expecting out of Square Enix. With complicated controls, the lack of variety, too many annoyances, and the disappointingly short amount of gameplay time (roughly 20 hours at most; that’s practically two sittings) Full Metal Alchemist and the Broken Angel just isn’t anything better than a rental.
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