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I'm looking at pictures of the various armours shown in the medium category, and I'm having trouble figuring out why the breastplate is the prime defensive option. I'll preface this by saying I am not an expert on historical warfare by any means.
As near as I can tell, the breastplate was just a part of any armour set. You wouldn't go into battle wearing only a breastplate and your clothes underneath, because it would leave your head, neck, legs, and sometimes arms exposed. When I compare this to some of the pictures of full chain mail, scale armour, and even hide (I guess we'll say that's boiled leather or lamellar?), there's usually more covered by these other armour types.
I understand the breastplate was the best choice in PF1, but if this is a new game, we could probably kill a few equipment cows. It would even be fine if you had light, medium, and heavy categories of armour and let the player say what kind of armour they're wearing.
Actually, quite a few warriors in history and fiction only wore a Breastplate, or one accompanied by other armor-like items the rules just don't recognize as armor; such as gauntlets, sabatons, and helmets.
As for why you'd choose it over scale amd chain armors with more coverage historically: Armor was typically more expensive than a lay-warrior could actually afford, and most types of armor need to be sized fairly closely to their intended wearers. Stolen/Looted Breastplates on the otherhand were closer to unisized, and more easily adjusted to worn as piece-mail.
As for why it is better mechanically in PF2. It is just a trope of fantasy gaming established by numerous old systems (like AD&D and Rollmaster). Having better protection for vital areas is assumed to outweigh having more coverage over non-vital areas instead; because enemies are assumed to be aiming for your vitals regardless of how well armored they are compared to the rest of you.
the breast plate and helmet is actually sufficient, when paired with a shield. the shield will protect the arms, and you would use slips to protect legs.
Plate armor is vastly superior to chain and scale but is more expensive. that being said chain mail was very very effective armor, and was still in use even with the advent of plate armor.
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The various standard D&D armors are kind of from all over history, rather than all being contemporaries.
You've got bronze breastplates in the classical era, and then (chain)mail started to show up. Mail would eventually extend to cover pretty much the whole body. Then over the course of the medieval period, people started adding more solid plates to their mail (including first coats of multiple smaller plates--what D&D mistakenly calls studded leather--and then later solid breastplates) until eventually it was almost entirely plates with only some mail at the joints. At that point, shields fell out of use because the armor coverage was so total that there was no need for it.
Then guns came along and started punching holes through the steel plates.
The reason the breastplate was one of the last armors to become obsolete was because, as firearms came on the scene and became more powerful, armor plates had to become thicker to stop it. (Mail was just plain useless; it actually made bullet wounds worse.) It very quickly reached the point where a full suit at that thickness would be too heavy to be practical, but keeping just the breastplate to protect the center of mess would still work.
Firearms then eventually rendered those obsolete as well, and armor disappeared from the battlefield for a few centuries.
(Modern steel ballistic plates to protect against rifles are way thicker than medieval armor was, and heavy enough that they can only manage 10" x 12" plates front and back, which weigh about 15 lbs.)
So in the kind of era D&D tends to take place, where firearms are rare, I think it's very unlikely that you'd see a breastplate by itself, rather than as an addition to an armor with more coverage (like chainmail) or as part of a full plate suit.
The various standard D&D armors are kind of from all over history, rather than all being contemporaries.
You've got bronze breastplates in the classical era, and then (chain)mail started to show up. Mail would eventually extend to cover pretty much the whole body. Then over the course of the medieval period, people started adding more solid plates to their mail (including first coats of multiple smaller plates--what D&D mistakenly calls studded leather--and then later solid breastplates) until eventually it was almost entirely plates with only some mail at the joints. At that point, shields fell out of use because the armor coverage was so total that there was no need for it.
Then guns came along and started punching holes through the steel plates.
The reason the breastplate was one of the last armors to become obsolete was because, as firearms came on the scene and became more powerful, armor plates had to become thicker to stop it. (Mail was just plain useless; it actually made bullet wounds worse.) It very quickly reached the point where a full suit at that thickness would be too heavy to be practical, but keeping just the breastplate to protect the center of mess would still work.
Firearms then eventually rendered those obsolete as well, and armor disappeared from the battlefield for a few centuries.
(Modern steel ballistic plates to protect against rifles are way thicker than medieval armor was, and heavy enough that they can only manage 10" x 12" plates front and back, which weigh about 15 lbs.)
So in the kind of era D&D tends to take place, where firearms are rare, I think it's very unlikely that you'd see a breastplate by itself, rather than as an addition to an armor with more coverage (like chainmail) or as part of a full plate suit.
Just a random tidbit to add to the history lesson, some modern body armor is actually very similar to scale, but with the scales being something like ceramic instead of steel. The ceramic absorbs and distributes the impact of the bullet, while the multiple scales means it can take more than one hit, provided they're not *too* close together.
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Frustrating as it is in a world where this is considered thoughtful behavior from a designer, we'll never get a great balance of verisimilitude and fun gameplay.
So, OP, you're asking the wrong question.
"Why can't we just rename the armors to something abstract?" might be a better one, IMHO.