What Fullmetal Alchemist video games are there?
The main Fullmetal Alchemist games are a PlayStation 2 trilogy developed by Racjin and published by Square Enix: Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel (2003 in Japan, 2005 in North America), Curse of the Crimson Elixir (2004 in Japan, 2005 in North America), and a third entry, The Girl Who Succeeds God, released in Japan in 2005 and never localized. They are action RPGs that follow the brothers through anime era storylines with original chapters woven between familiar events.
Broken Angel arrived early in the 2003 anime's life and plays as a companion piece to it, with animated cutscenes produced for the game and the Japanese voice cast performing an original plot about a runaway train, a besieged city and a girl named Armony. Crimson Elixir tightened the combat, added alchemy crafting and followed the anime's opening arcs more closely. Neither was a critical hit, but both sold to the anime audience and received official strategy guides in Japan and North America, a sign of how seriously Square Enix treated the license.
The third PS2 game staying in Japan makes it the trilogy's collecting prize: complete Japanese copies with the obi and registration cards intact are the target, and its story, involving a girl who inherits a godlike alchemy, closes threads the localized games opened. A strategy approach that works across the trilogy is to treat alchemy transmutation as the economy: break down everything, since materials for healing items and weapon upgrades come from the environment rather than shops, and save heavy transmutations for the chimera boss fights that gate each chapter.
Handhelds filled the gaps. Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy for Nintendo DS (2005, released in English in 2006) retells the 2003 anime as a side scrolling brawler with touch screen alchemy. The PSP received a Brotherhood era action game in Japan in 2009 and a trading card battler, and Japan only feature phone and later smartphone titles culminated in Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile (2022), a squad RPG that shut down in March 2024, leaving the console trilogy as the series' permanent playable record.
For a collector starting today, the two English PS2 games are inexpensive and common, the Japanese third game and the DS entry are the moderate hunts, and sealed copies of any of them should be checked for the bonus materials Square Enix packed in, including mini manga and soundtrack samplers in some Japanese first runs.
