No, this is not a troll, and I think it's silly that people might think I'm trolling simply because I don't like a show, but when it's the highest rated anime on the sight I can probably come to expect some hate. But Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is just not that good.
For one, the pacing is really messed up. In the first season (12 episodes) we jump from past to present and zoom through something I can tell was probably a really important part of the story, and it left me with no way of attaching myself to any of the characters. Several characters die and impact the story and the mains but it's so rushed that as a part of the audience I can't find it in myself to care, really. It seemed like they were plot devices.
Another thing I think is bad is the way things are revealed. Without getting too much into spoilers, we're kept in the dark of a character's past until some part of the story like 40 episodes in, and then all of a sudden it's dropped on us and we're expected to get it. The anime also has a lot of "philosophical" undertones, I guess, but the philosophies are really weak and surface level. Such as Edward in the first few episodes when he's in that town and talks to the Rose character, telling her that humans can be made with ingredients found in the town market and that alchemists are atheistic because they know these things--but Edward has SEEN god. This, also, is conveyed after the fact, which just makes it even more confusing.
And really my biggest issue with the anime is that there seems to be an inconsequential bit of tension. IT's so repetitive. Ed and Al fall apart and we all know they'll just get put back together again The whole reason Ed has automail is so that it can get wrecked in the story so he seems to be in danger. Nothing ever comes of it! By the end all the characters are pretty much the same, no development has been done, but the show has a Disney ending anyway because, for some reason, a show with philosophical undertones needs to end happily.
The animation was really good, and I enjoyed fight scenes well enough, even if a power like alchemy is poorly explained. It looked good all the way through, and there's no character designs I dislike either, but they use the same music tracks over and over in the show and I started to get tired of the music overall. I will say this, though, the openings and endings are pretty top notch.
So overall I didn't really like this show at all. My biggest thing is that I think this show has a high score because it came at a time that anime was booming, and it successfully adapted the source material in a way that the original failed to do. You know everyone says "the book is better than the movie" even when the movie was good? That's because, for some reason, people just think the thing that came first is better. So when a bad show is made from a bad manga, people think it's good because it stays faithful, but I don't like it. If you did, that's fine, but you have to remember that the philosophy is weak, the characters don't develop, and the ending is predictable.
