’Armored Core: Project Phantasma’ is one of the best expansions to a game I’ve seen. It takes almost all the issues of the base game and improves on them making it overall a smoother and more enjoyable experience. If you are expecting something a bit more innovative and unique you may be let down, but if you play it with the expectations of something more akin to a story dlc then I think there’s a lot to get out of it.
The first thing I really wanted to talk about was how much better the missions are in this title. In the base game, it struggled a lot due to the inconsistency of quality between the levels, but ’Project Phantasma’ has no mission I disliked which I was quite surprised by. The levels here are a lot more challenging, but feel a lot more fair and well crafted. There’s more of an emphasis on boss fights which makes things really interesting at times since then you have to manage how much ammo you use as well as how much damage you take before the major fight. The areas these missions take place in as well are much better than the base game with a lot of them being much more memorable and again consistent with its quality.
Now the game does have one unique aspect to it which is probably the biggest reason I would recommend the game. The introduction to arena mode which I ended up loving a lot in this title. Arena mode is basically a huge leaderboard of ACs which you start at the bottom of. You work your way up by just beating the AC one spot above you and this is an incredibly fun time killer honestly. AC to AC fights are some of the highlights for the campaign of both the base game and ’Project Phantasma’ so a mode dedicated to it is great. It is also super cool because you can choose whichever map you want for any of the fights which you can use against the other AC you’re fighting. For example, if you are fighting an AC who likes to fly around a lot, you can choose a map that has a really low roof so they don't really get anywhere. This was really fun to mess with and that made learning some of the battles really memorable. They do get really difficult though. I think I made it to 27 on the leaderboard after stopping because they are very challenging. The other thing about arena mode that’s helpful is you can use it to get a whole lot of credits and new parts for your mech. You’d think this would come with a catch if you lose a fight, but there’s no punishment. Now this does remove some of the challenge of not going into debt that was apparent in the base game, but it then encourages you to use more parts and weapons which I ended up really enjoying. The new arena mode is a fantastic addition and was a wonderful start to the game mode.
The story of ’Project Phantasma’, like the base game, is super silly and fun. This time around though, there is a much stronger focus on characters and although they aren’t the most unique, they are still really enjoyable. Stinger especially, I loved him a lot as a villain. He was insanely over the top in the best way possible. The voice acting (at least the english dialogue) wasn’t terrible either. I mean it’s not good or anything, but for a PS1 title, the voice acting is decent. I enjoyed the story quite a bit.
If you’re looking for a new game entirely, then you won’t really find that here, but if you’re like me and thought ’Armored Core’ had more potential it didn’t fully capture and you were curious to see it reach that point than this is really close to that. I am intrigued to see where ’Master Of Arena’ goes from this and hope I get the same amount of enjoyment from it that I did here.
The first thing I really wanted to talk about was how much better the missions are in this title. In the base game, it struggled a lot due to the inconsistency of quality between the levels, but ’Project Phantasma’ has no mission I disliked which I was quite surprised by. The levels here are a lot more challenging, but feel a lot more fair and well crafted. There’s more of an emphasis on boss fights which makes things really interesting at times since then you have to manage how much ammo you use as well as how much damage you take before the major fight. The areas these missions take place in as well are much better than the base game with a lot of them being much more memorable and again consistent with its quality.
Now the game does have one unique aspect to it which is probably the biggest reason I would recommend the game. The introduction to arena mode which I ended up loving a lot in this title. Arena mode is basically a huge leaderboard of ACs which you start at the bottom of. You work your way up by just beating the AC one spot above you and this is an incredibly fun time killer honestly. AC to AC fights are some of the highlights for the campaign of both the base game and ’Project Phantasma’ so a mode dedicated to it is great. It is also super cool because you can choose whichever map you want for any of the fights which you can use against the other AC you’re fighting. For example, if you are fighting an AC who likes to fly around a lot, you can choose a map that has a really low roof so they don't really get anywhere. This was really fun to mess with and that made learning some of the battles really memorable. They do get really difficult though. I think I made it to 27 on the leaderboard after stopping because they are very challenging. The other thing about arena mode that’s helpful is you can use it to get a whole lot of credits and new parts for your mech. You’d think this would come with a catch if you lose a fight, but there’s no punishment. Now this does remove some of the challenge of not going into debt that was apparent in the base game, but it then encourages you to use more parts and weapons which I ended up really enjoying. The new arena mode is a fantastic addition and was a wonderful start to the game mode.
The story of ’Project Phantasma’, like the base game, is super silly and fun. This time around though, there is a much stronger focus on characters and although they aren’t the most unique, they are still really enjoyable. Stinger especially, I loved him a lot as a villain. He was insanely over the top in the best way possible. The voice acting (at least the english dialogue) wasn’t terrible either. I mean it’s not good or anything, but for a PS1 title, the voice acting is decent. I enjoyed the story quite a bit.
If you’re looking for a new game entirely, then you won’t really find that here, but if you’re like me and thought ’Armored Core’ had more potential it didn’t fully capture and you were curious to see it reach that point than this is really close to that. I am intrigued to see where ’Master Of Arena’ goes from this and hope I get the same amount of enjoyment from it that I did here.