Fullmetal Alchemist 2 Curse of the Crimson Elixir continues the Fullmetal Alchemist gameplay. You are the two brothers, hunting through the world for the philosopher's stone.



The game is an odd mix of good and not-so-good. First, the good. The graphics are lovely. The cel shaded look makes it feel like you're walking around in an anime series, with nicely detailed backgrounds.

The sounds are also well done, with good series-related music and voices. Again, it helps you to feel like you're in a show.

But interestingly those are all part of the down side as well. The game is very much like sitting back and watching a TV show. There is probably 10 minutes of intro stuff that you just sit and watch, perhaps clicking X a few times. When they finally get to an area where you can DO something, it's very straightforward. The attacks are simply button combos. Transmutations are fairly automatic. Sometimes there are cool special attacks, and sometimes you have to know which attacks to use against which enemies. Still, it is all very bland.

If at least the game was long and provided a lot of variety along the way, that would be one thing. But it is REALLY short. The kind of game you can rent on a Friday night and drop it back off at the rental place Saturday night.

You get a second disc in the pack which has two of the show's episodes so fans of these two episodes do get that bonus.

For fans of the series, I highly recommend you rent it. I'll give it 4/5 stars as a rental - the graphics are nice, the gameplay is OK and you get to immerse yourself in a "virtual story" for a while. But I wouldn't recommend buying this to replay over and over.

Buy Fullmetal Alchemist 2 Curse of the Crimson Elixir from Amazon.com