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With most popular animes getting their own video games like the Naruto series or even Bleach on various consoles like the Playstation 2 and the PSP. FullMetal Alchemist makes its way to the PSP which is probably the first time anyone heard about this, because most FullMetal Alchemist games were only released in Japan and North America.

If you are not familiar with the series in general, the plot to the FullMetal Alchemist series in general is based on two brothers named Edward and Alphonse. When they were young they lost their mother and got into Alchemy; they find a way to bring her back, things go terribly wrong. Alphonse loses his whole body and his spirit is in an empty amour; Edward loses and arm and a leg. Instead Edward gets auto mail to replace the arm and leg which he lost and becomes a State Alchemist. But throughout the series and story their journey is to finding a way to get their own bodies back and the truth about the Philosopher’s Stone.

Gameplay: With most animes being RPG games for various systems, FullMetal Alchemist for the PSP is an Action/Fighting game. Story mode however follows the fights during anime series that’s if you’ve watched the series or read the Manga series, you’ll only be using Edward and Alphonse to begin with. Once you’ve beaten Story mode first time round you’ll be able to unlock more characters like Mustang, Riza, Scar, Lust and many more.
Gameplay itself however is like any other normal fighting game, you and your partner who ever you choose, will be working as a team to take down your opponents.

Apart from punching and kicking, you’ll be able to use Alchemy which can do some damage by pressing the R button and useing either X or Circle to use it. The L button can target lock your opponents but can be a little annoying at times, another thing you’ll notice is that you’ll only be using the directional pad to move.

It would have been great if you can also use the analog stick but it’s useable at all, the more attacks and more damage you make to your opponents you’ll be able to pull off team-up attacks which can also do some major damage.
Also during gameplay if you get knocked down and if your partner is still fighting, they’ll be able to come back and retrieve you back up, but if you and your partner are both beaten you lose.

There are some RPG elements as well as each fight you go through; if you win or lose each fight you’ll gain levels and CP to make your characters stronger by increasing their attack, defense or even there special attacks.

Graphics and Sound: The graphics may look decent enough and look detailed for an anime game for the PSP, but then again the graphics for this would have been about the same if this was on the PS2. But the official character art from the anime series are well done in general as always if you watch the series in general, during cutscenes which are all text dialog and of course charcters re-actions from each of the charcters. Most of the environments are well detailed and look almost perfect as the anime series, but however most of the arenas are small and are in a circle ring kind of like a Gladiator arena.

Camera problem will be the most annoying thing you’ll encounter a lot during gameplay which can be really especially if you’re target-locked to an opponent and the other opponent is elsewhere running around a lot. Another thing you’ll notice that the soundtrack can feel really repetitive at times; it’s just a shame that it doesn’t have the opening and ending theme songs added in the game.

Voicing however is all in Japanese but not to worry there’s English Text to understand what they are saying. Because you don’t have the option to change the voicing to English if you do watch anime in English in general, but hey this could be a good thing you might learn a bit of Japanese while you’re at it.

Overall: You can play up to four friends if they own a copy of this game, but I think you can play this online if you’ve downloaded Ad-Havoc Party from the PlayStation Store. Beating the main story for each character can take you up to an hour or more pending on if you skip the side-missions at any time. There is bonus content as well from unlocking art for Gallery mode, alternate costumes for each characters and voices.

I would admit this is most likely will appeal to fans of the series or anyone who’s into anime, but I would point that this will be a hard game to find. Because you won’t be able to find this in anywhere if you live in the UK but however the series is quite popular in Italy and Germany, but however you can always look online if you’re tempted to buy this game, I’m not even sure this not available for the PSP Go if you do have one.

It may have it’s up and down moments; the game itself is worth checking if you are a fan of the series or into anime.