I haven't played the collectible card game for FMA. I'm not even sure that one exists. If it does, perhaps people who are used to that game and have mastered its intricacies will get some enjoyment out of this DS game.

I spent 30 minutes going through the tutorials, played through the first fight in another 30, then ejected it in disgust and tossed it in the pile of games to sell used.

The game is complex and quite difficult to learn, with the manual and software tutorials not helping much at all. Sometimes, a complex play system can be rewarding and fun to learn and master. In this case, it feels like arbitrary self-punishment.

The controls are chaotically organized (L1 lets you view the details of the cards. R1 passes. Don't hit R1 on accident) and the card display only lets you see about a sixth of the 'table' at a time.

Given a choice between having to play this game for two more hours or having to do a hundred pushups in a single day, even the biggest FMA fan would probably opt for the pushups so that they could get back to spending time with the actual FMA story on print, video, or perhaps via any of the other and vastly superior video games.

Don't buy this game, and don't let your friends buy it.