The second installment in FromSoftware's Armored Core series, released in 1997 for the PlayStation.
One day, a Raven gets a direct request with a considerable bounty and only a vague instruction: "Infiltrate the underground urban complex, Amber Crown". Heading there, the Raven soon comes in conflict with a group known as the Doomsday Organization and becomes acquainted with fellow Raven Sumika, who had been captured as a test subject for their experiments. As the pair wage war against the Doomsday Organization, they find themselves in the crosshair of the group's deranged enforcer, Stinger.
Released a scant four months after the original Armored Core, Project Phantasma established a pattern of every numbered Amored Core being followed by one or more Mission Pack Sequels, keeping the same game engine while adding more parts and missions. Project Phantasma does make a major addition to the formula - the Arena, a 50-person tournament where players can fight one-on-one battles against AI Ravens for bonus money and parts. The feature wound up so well-received that it became the focus of the next game, Armored Core: Master of Arena.
The game provides examples of:
- Brain Uploading: Implied to be the ultimate purpose of Project Phantasma.
- Character Catchphrase: Stinger really likes describing things as "annoyances" (面倒, translated as "nuisances" in some missions), using the word in almost all of his appearances.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Stinger is already a pretty unhinged fellow, but the message he sends to the player after he's fully fused to Project Phantasma is noticeably more deranged.
- Damsel out of Distress: Sumika was a Raven captured by the Doomsday Organization and who sent the initial request to be rescued. She manages to hijack a truck before you reach her, though she still needs some assistance escaping her captor.
- Gladiator Subquest: The game introduces the Arena, a mode separate from the main story where the player starts at the bottom of a 50-steps ladder and climbs the rank by fighting each successive ranker in a battlefield of your choice. You get an increasing amount of money as well as the occasional part from defeating a Raven and unlike the main story, there is no ammo or repair expenses, so it's a great way to earn money.
- The Heavy: Stinger is the game's primary antagonist despite being The Dragon in terms of his plot role, at least until the last few missions.
- Infinity +1 Sword: A player fighting their way to the top of the Arena will find themselves rewarded with perhaps the most broken weapon in Armored Core's history, the WA-FINGER. It's a machine gun with above-average power, an insane firing rate, the lightest weight for a weapon of its type, and despite that, a ludicrous ammo capacity of 3000 rounds (for reference, the next highest-capacity machine gun has 1000 rounds). Unsurprisingly, future incarnations of it are Nerfed into oblivion.
- Old Save Bonus: Players can transfer their save from the original game to keep whatever parts and money they have accumulated. This is the only way to use Human Plus and the secret parts as they are not obtainable in Project Phantasma itself.
- Lighter and Softer: The original game's grim themes of corporate oppression take a backseat to a more straightforward tale of good vs. evil.
- Prequel: A Japanese guidebook establishes the game as taking place two years before the events of the original Armored Core.
- Recurring Boss: Stinger is by far the most recurring opponent in any Armored Core game, being fought three times in his regular form and twice in his Phantasma incarnation.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Any group calling itself "The Doomsday Organization" is probably up to no good. Averted in the Japanese version, though, where it had the significantly more benign name "Wednesday Organization".
- This Cannot Be!: Stinger has this reaction when defeated in the final encounter.I… I am losing? Impossible! I'm burning! Phantasma!... I am dying!
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Stinger's AC "Vixen" consists entirely of custom parts. Players would only get to use them when a set of parts based on Vixen was introduced in Armored Core: Nexus, as rewards for playing through the "Revolution" Disc.
