Hi Everyfolks! Today we have a new guest author, The Celtic Spear!

Without any further ado, let’s get to it:

You may be asking to yourself: what the hell is Armored Core Nine Breaker? why is it so underrated?

Well, I am here to answer those questions and maybe, after reading this article, you may want to pick up the game and play it yourself.

So let’s begin, shall we?

WHAT IS ARMORED CORE Nine Breaker:

Well, Nine Breaker is the 9th installment [correct me if I am wrong] of the video game franchise Armored Core (or AC for short) and can be considered as a spin off, since it doesn’t follow the same structure as the rest of the games.

For example: in this game the plot is almost non-existent (I’ll get into that later)

and instead of focusing on taking missions issued by the corporations in order to make profit

you participate in training missions that are aimed at making YOU the ultimate weapon.

The gameplay can be divided in 3 main parts: mech customization, the training missions and the arena.

dont worry, I will explain each of them to you right now.

MECH CUSTOMIZATION:

All AC games focuses heavily on mech customization and Nine Breaker is no different. as my friend Coffee Potato mentioned in previous articles:

your mech is made out of 4 frame parts (Head, Core, Arms and Legs), 4 internal parts (FCS, Generator, Radiator and Boosters), 2 optional parts (Inside and Extension), and finally the weapons.

as you can probably imagine you have almost endeless possible configurations for your ACs so you can go wild with your designs.

To give you an idea of how an AC looks like here is my main AC: Fantail

The good part of this game is that (unlike most of the other AC games) 90% of the parts are unlocked from the get go. so you can start making really cool desings from the very beginning.

THE TRAINING MISSIONS:

This is the main event of this game, most of the AC games follow a story line that unfolds while you make your way through the missions, Nine Breaker however is a different kind of animal, here instead of having your standard “go here, kill this, mission complete” type of deal

you have a lot, and i mean a lot, of different test and trials to complete.

all of them are focused on different mechanics of the game like heat management, long range combat, short range combat, turning speed, lock box management, etc… you name it, you have it.

this is unfortunately the part I think that killed the game in terms of popularity, like I mentioned before, all of the games previous to Nine Breaker focused on a story

and now instead you have this weird test like missions with no story whatsoever.

but don’t let this fact dissuade you from playing this game, this game is still a lot of fun and will give you hours and hours of play time.

And don’t worry, there is not a single giant mechanical ant in this game.

THE ARENA:

The arena makes a comeback from previous installments and this time with a cool new feature: Randomized AI opponents.

this feature allows you to choose between a lot of different filters

like the difficulty of the enemy, it’s weight class, leg type, preffered combat range etc…

and the game will give you a list of randomized opponets to choose from and where you want to fight them.

Cool isn’t it?

Along the randomized opponets you will have another list with other Ravens like yourself to fight

and this ones are much more harder than the randomized ones as the Ravens have their own fully customized AC just like you.

THE PLOT:

Some veterans of the franchise will be surpised by this.

Nine Breaker does have a plot and it connects directly to Nexus and Last Raven.

(HUGE SPOILER WARNING FOR NEXUS AND LAST RAVEN)

The game takes place during the second half of Nexus and revolves around Jack-O trainning a Raven (You) to transform him into “the ultimate war machine”

to fight the imminent threat of the pulverizers, machines that learn and from their defeats becoming more and more powerful and eventually becoming invincible

(this is just speculation by the way as the only “plot” you have are two emails you recieve at the beginning and the end of the game)

And that’s it… that’s the whole story of the game, no joke.

this game is basically a glorified tutorial for last raven

THE RETURN OF NINEBALL!!!:

As you can probably guess, you can’t become a “Nine Breaker” without defeating Nineball first.

This game is no the exception, the final boss of this game is the red hostile himself.

Boy oh boy, this boss is hard as f*ck, it’s much more powerful than a regular AC

and has some extra gimmicks that aren’t even available to you.

But, I will leave it there, the rest you will have to find out for yourself.

MY STORY WITH THE GAME:

One day I was on internet doing the usual: Youtube, Facebook, some other things here and there, that kind of stuff

and I ended up watching a video called “Top 5 best mech games” or something like that and among the list was a franchise I never heard before: Armored Core.

so i immediately searched for the game and when i saw written on the screen right in front of my eyes: “it’s a video game franchise focused on mech customization with mecha designs by the mech designer of macross”

I was sold, I was 100% getting an AC game right then and there so I searched some more to see how many games this franchise had

and to my good surprise they were a lot of them, around 15 games and most of them on the ps2 (lucky me!!!).

The next day in the morning I decided to go to a nearby game store to see if they had any AC game, I asked the girl that worked there about the games but the girl said that she never heard of Armored Core before.

So I was about to go out of the store disappointing when I caught a glimpse at one of the shelves on my way out

There was a game with a lot of dust on in, and it immediately caught my attention, so I picked up the box and cleaned a little of the dust and what did i see:

a red mech with the words Armored Core: Nine Breaker written above it, I checked the price and it said 1000CLP (around 2 US dollars)

I was the luckiest man alive at that moment.

When I got home, I booted up the game, and the first thing I said when i started playing it was: “where the fuck is the story mode?”

I was so confused. “wasn’t this the game about a guy who wanted revenge on this red mech because it killed his family or something?”, I asked to myself.

I later found out, I was confusing Nine Breaker with Master of Arena, another AC game for the ps1, so I went to read some reviews for Nine Breaker and…

most of them said that the game sucked.

I face-palmed so hard.

I decided to ignore the reviews and play the game anyway, it had cost me just 2 dollars, I wasn’t losing too much anyways.

I was expecting to dislike it, but I soon found myself enjoying it… a lot, actually.

My first AC sucked so much that the most basic enemies kicked my ass like if it was nothing, they were not even fucking trying.

The more I played it, the more I enjoyed it.

I was terrified at first, with all of the different stats and numbers there was on the screen,

but after some experimentation I was able to understand all of it perfectly.

Soon, I was able to make a decent AC: Black Ghost

I ended up playing the game for a long time, I had more than 2000 hours of gameplay (that’s like 2 months non-stop)

I literally played the game until the disk had worn off, and I really think that this game is a masterpiece that is totally worth your time.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

If you are a veteran looking to put your AC building Skills to the test or a new player looking for a place to start then this game is for you.

Sure, there is no plot, but not a single AC game has ever focused on the plot and most of the time the plot in this games is just an excuse to put you giant war machine into the action.

Sicerely,

The Celtic Spear, a proven veteran of the franchise.