Armored Core: Project Phantasma - Storyline Compared To Other Armored Core Games

Storyline Compared To Other Armored Core Games

Project Phantasma, in addition to Armored Core 2 is considered as being one of the most "personal" AC games. Despite its short length of its story (less than 30 missions, total) the game has some of the most defined characters in the normally detached Armored Core world. The story follows a single plotline throughout the game instead of dangling story threads connected to an overall arc like in the original Armored Core.

Sumika is present right through the game's storyline either as a friendly AC pilot or an ad hoc operator for the player's character. She is in some ways the prototype for the later operator characters like Lana Neilson, Nell Aulter, Laine Meyers, Emma Sears, Sheila Caldwell and the unnamed operators of Another Age, Nexus and Nine Breaker.

Stinger is another character that is ever present in the game from the third mission onward. He is the most recurring and most-fought villain in any single Armored Core game. Only Nineball has appeared more often, albeit across the span of multiple games. A criticism of his character however has been that he has no revealed motivation for his actions. He has not explained reasons for wanting the Phantasma technology beyond sheer self-obsessed megalomania and a lust for power.

These elements make a return in Master of Arena and Armored Core 2, but appear to slowly drop off in Another Age through Nine Breaker, which has no storyline and no characters beyond the training program's various operators and the mysterious author of the emails that open and close the game.