Armored Core: Nine Breaker is really not the game to use as a starting point to the AC series.
Armored Core: Nine Breaker is faithful to its Armored Core franchise predecessors in the sense of gameplay. You are a mercenary, testing the limits of your skills to become the greatest Armored Core fighter ever. You will fight a series of matches in a tournament to eventually defeat Nine Ball and gain the title of Nine Breaker.
The game is separated into two distinct modes, Training and Arena.
The Training mode is a series of challenges that by completing them successfully you will upgrade your stats, such as Attack, Defense and Movement. Each time you complete a level of training, a new one - more challenging - unlocks. There are 150 training challenges, ranging from obstacle courses to target practice or using multiple weapons, and each of them has three ranks of completion: bronze, silver and gold medals, awarded depending on your performance (how quickly you finished, how many targets you killed and so on). This brings in the replay value factor to try to beat your previous score, since with each successful mission you become stronger and faster. It's essential that you do Training before moving on to the Arena.
The Arena is a series of tournaments composed of a little over 20 stages of exhibition and rank matches, and something like 200 opponents. There is also a search feature with different parameters so you can find opponents that suit you the most, selecting from five categories (Class, Rank, Leg Type, Weight, and Range).
By moving up ranks in both Arena and Training, you will unlock new and better parts which you use to customize your Armored Core (AC). There are about 18 different parts (body, legs, head, arms,etc.) and artillery (an arsenal ranging from cannons to missiles, machine guns and rifles) each of them with at least 30 options. In total there are over 400 parts, so the customization options are endless. The problem is, there is no description to tell you what is better and what sucks, so it's a trial and error game for "equipping" your AC, which is a frustrating and time-consuming process.
Visually, the game is very appealing. The explosions and smoke trails from the weapons, reflections in water, the environment and surroundings are worth stopping to look at. The audio is pretty good when it comes to sound effects; heavy weapons sound different from light projectiles, and the mechs' feet clank or thump according to their weight. Hoever, the background music could have used some work, since the same techno beat is repetitive and gets quite annoying after a while.
Armored Core: Nine Breaker has a very strong point in the multiplayer option. Bring three of your friends (multitap required) and shoot, kill and blow the crap out of each other in a furious foursome Arena match.
Being new to Armored Core, I didn't find anything in Nine Breaker that would be useful for a beginner. The game lacks a tutorial, and I was in desperate need of one since I couldn't even figure out how to move properly. Actually, I thought the Training mode would tell me that, but it only stated my objective.
However, if you are already an experienced Armored Core player, the challenges will be much more enjoyable, and you will definitely jump with joy at the thought of trying out Nine Breaker. Especially if you own Nexus, since it lets you import your data with all the parts acquired on your AC.
As for me, the fast-paced matches were a bit too much for my clumsy "newbieness". Armored Core: Nine Breaker is really not the game to use as a starting point to the AC series.
This review is part of Grrlgamer.com.
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