The game will manage to hold your attention until you unlock all there is to unlock, not that they are good, though
Keep in mind i AM somewhat biased, I love the series, so I it's kinda hard being impartial(If you dislike the series, reduce my score to 4.0.
Graphic wise, the sprites are clean, they look nice, although, personally, I didn't think most characters looked as good as I expected them to be. Also, Edward is allright, but some characters, such as Izumi, could have benefited from some more frames(Ever saw her running?) and others, such as Scar, simply look weird. Most of the images, which are stills from the series, are of bad quality. I mean, not only is the story told with stills, but they don't good! The in-game sprite are really colourful, but the stills , compared with the sprites, are all grainy and pixelated. Not good, not good at all. Worst part is, most of the unlockables are images.I think it would have been better for the unlockable images to be original artwork......
Concerning sound.... There's music from the show!, the intro is "Melissa"(Instrumental). There are also some sound bites here and there, but for a DS game they are just too few. Although, compared to the images, have great quality.
The game plays just like a brawler, old school, meaning one button for punching and one for jumping. There are two possible combo strings, standing and moving, although they are practically the same. There are no desperation attacks, instead you have access to alchemy. Tap the Touch Screen, and you can unleash your attack alchemy(Which is WAY stronger than any other attack). If you have enough "Alchemy Materials", obtained by breaking boxes and killing enemies, you can charge it , and deal more damage in a bigger area. There is no block button, instead, you can create walls.
Here's the catch, the walls don't block attacks per se, rather, they prevent the enemy from tresspassing it. So, if the enemie's animation is large, and you are close by, he'll hurt you anyways. The walls do block projectiles, though, and on key places, you have to use them to cross gaps. BUT, if you were to, accidentally fall, the spikes/fire/whatever you wanted to cross, they hit you and knock you back.... TOWARDS YOUR WALL!, so sometimes, it's impossible to get out, since there's no invincibility when getting up, so until your wall disappears(Or you die) you are stuck.
Now, concerning attack alchemy, the more you charge the attack, the more alchemy material it consumes and the more it needs to recharge. The thing is....doing level 1 alchemy drains NOTHING, it does A LOT OF DAMAGE and recharges really fast, so you can simply raise some walls and spam the weak alchemy and kill enemies without even getting hurt, talk about challenge.
The game, is rather easy and rather short. There are a few mini-games, but they are not much fun. Also, there are unlimited continues, so if you die, no worries.
Also, they tried to condense the 52 episode series, and in the begining I thought they did it pretty well, but nearing the end, unless you've seen the series, you won't understand a thing, so if you haven't seen it, just skip the story sequences, it'll make you dislike the game, since you won;t understand it.
After finishing storymode, you unlock Character Mode, in which you can play as six characters. All characters follow the roughly the same path, except that the third stage is a bit(A TINY little bit different for some characters), but Edward, who has the longest "stage 3"(There's an extra boss for him there) and has an extra stage(Flame VS Fullmetal). The good thing about Character mode, is that there are almost NO minigames and no story sequences.
All characters play roughly the same. Some have shorter/longer attack strings, and for some, the timing of your button presses are a bit different. All characters have acces to everyone's alchemy. This is a good idea, but they use it the same way the other characters do, except that they can use THEIR alchemy up to level three, and the other dude's alchemies up to level two, but you'll be sticking mostly to Ed's or Al's, since regardless of the character, all alchemies deal the same damage, and Al's or Ed's have the best range.
By finishing story mode, you unlock images(Ugh), "Mascots", which look equally bad, sound files and Alarm clocks. Also, you can unlock two alchemies, which, regardless of the character, can be levelled up to three. But they make the game even easier!. One enhances your attack, and has 0 recharge time, regardless of the level. The other one can heal, however it's recharge time is "inversed", as in, the lower the level, the longest it needs to recharge.
Wrapping things up, for fans, it's a decent game, but for other people, it doesn't even deserve to be rented.