The ninth game in FromSoftware's Armored Core series, released in 2005 for the Playstation 2.
A mysterious organization has been screening Ravens for participation in an elite training program. Though many have been screened, only a chosen few have been inducted. You are one of the selected candidate, who will undertake a comprehensive training regiment designed to improve the pilot's understanding of all aspects of Armored Core design and piloting.
A Mission-Pack Sequel to Armored Core: Nexus, Nine Breaker makes the unusual move of ditching mission gameplay. Instead, players will undertake 5-steps training exercises focused on one specific aspect of Armored Core gameplay. Tests may involve things like shooting down a number of targets within a time limit, surviving a gauntlet without exceeding a specific internal heat value, or pursuing a non-attack enemy AC without letting go of your lock-on. A proper Arena also returns after its absence in Nexus, though its implementation is quite different from any of the other games.
Nine Breaker is followed by Armored Core: Last Raven.
The game provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Due to the lack of ingame narrative, From Software partnered with defunct Japanese video game news website GPara to supply background bios
for the Arena's top rankers. - The Artifact: The term "Nine-Breaker" was previously only used in Armored Core 2 to refer to anyone who became #1 in the Arena. Along with Nine-Ball, its usage in this game is mostly just to commemorate this being the ninth entry in the series; while you can earn "Nine-Breaker" as a title, it's granted after earning 1,000,000 points, as opposed to clearing the Arena or defeating Nine-Ball.
- Book Ends: The training begins and ends with an email from one "Unknown" explaning the purpose of the program and your part in it.
- Effective Knockoff: This game's Nine-Ball is a replica based on data from the "distant past", as opposed to being the original Hustler One, which among other things might justify the iconic Leitmotif not being used for the final battle. How Raven's Ark got their hands on the schematics for an AC from a different continuity is anyone's guess.note
- Excuse Plot: The plot, such as it is, exists to explain why you're doing a game-long tutorial for the eight previous installments.
- Gameplay Grading: The training regiments have Bronze, Silver, and Gold ratings. Only bronze is required to pass, though getting Golds is tied to unlocking most of the game's new AC parts.
- Gladiator Subquest: There is an Arena mode. Where the arenas in previous games were opponent ladders, Nine Breaker's set-up has the player set various parameters (such as opponent skills, leg types, etc) and pairs them with one of hundreds of randomly-generated opponents, rinse and repeat to unlock more search parameters until the player gets enough ranking points to be invited to fight the 25 rankers (which do not need to be defeated sequentially, either).
- Justified Tutorial: The plot is that you're in a training program, hence the nature of the entire game. From a meta perspective, it makes more sense considering the next game is one of the hardest entries in the whole series and demands experimenting with various parts and builds, which is essential to Nine-Breaker.
- Legacy Boss Battle: Appropriately for the ninth game in the series, iconic original-universe boss Nine Ball returns as the boss AC in the final training exercise. The ending emails refers to him as a "reproduction of an enigma from the past".
- Old Save Bonus: You can transfer your save over from Nexus, but unlike the rest of the series, this might be counterproductive, as Nine-Breaker starts you off with almost all parts (save for a few hidden ones) and no shop, and transferring a save over will give you only what you had in your garage in Nexus. This means that unless you had 100% Completion in Nexus, you'll likely end up with a far smaller garage here than if you started a blank new game, with no way to obtain the missing parts. Even if one is to buy every parts in Nexus's shop and acquire all of its secret parts across both discs, one part (the CR-WB 94 MB 2 back missile launcher) is, for whatever reason, skipped over when doing the import, meaning anyone who makes use of the Import feature is automatically locked out of a complete garage.
- Shout-Out: One of the possible opponent in the C-Level arena is named Metal Wolf.
- Take That, Audience!: In the Japanese version, failing a training gives you a message saying "Nice joke". The western release changes it to a less flippant "Too bad".
- Too Long; Didn't Dub: In the VS AC regiment, it is possible for the enemy AC to go out-of-bounds and give you the win by default. In the western versions, the resulting dialogue is untranslated.
- World's Best Warrior: In the supplementary bio on GPara, top ranker Etzam Nar as having reigned at the top of the Arena for ten years and being so dominant that most think there will never be a Raven stronger than her.
