On paper, Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy appears to be a solid idea. Take the popular Fullmetal Alchemist television series, design an old-school beat 'em up brawler around it, throw in some touch screen functionality and release it to the joy of series fans and hardcore gamers alike. Yet, despite the potential of both the series and the genre, developer Namco-Bandai hit some snags along the way.

To be fair, Fullmetal Alchemist's core gameplay doesn't disappoint. It's a basic formula that focuses on beating up a certain number of bad guys before proceeding to the next room, but therein lies the charm. Simple puzzles litter the environments, a bed of spikes or stack of crates block the way, mandating the creation of canons and walls (via alchemy) to continue. Mixing up the tedium of combat, certain boss fights require a strategy beyond brute force; victory can sometimes be reliant upon clever use of the surrounding area to distract or injure a foe at an opportune time.

Unfortunately, there's a severe lack of content backing the enjoyable gameplay. Most may finish Story Mode within three or four hours, and that's including the lengthy cinematics and tricky boss fights. Given that the television show ran for 51 episodes, it's ridiculous the game ends after just a handful of levels. Important events and entire episodes that would have been perfect scenarios for the game are compressed into a few lines of dialog between levels, leaving both gamers and series fans unsatisfied.

Even the ability to replay the game with different characters doesn't help. Though having additional playable characters seems like it would add a good chunk of replay value, the lack of character-specific levels and fights for them just disappoints. Character Mode could have been a novel way to explore the actions and paths of the side characters featured throughout the series while providing additional content, but instead, these characters proceed through the same quest found in Story Mode with only a few minor differences, the result feeling tedious.