Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening review - Being Daimyo isn't easy

Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening is the latest game in a series that debuted in 1983. That’s 40 years of non-stop tactical action. The franchise has evolved and changed a great deal in that time. Nobunaga’s Ambition as a franchise is known for being more difficult than Koei Tecmo’s other strategy juggernaut - Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In this latest entry, you can settle for conquering your local region, but why stop there? The ultimate goal is to unify Japan under one banner.

In Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening, players take on the role of a major and minor Daimyo in the Sengoku Jidai era of Japan. With plenty of timeframes to start in and a few fictional options, there are plenty of historic moments to delve into. However, the amount you have to do can feel like a bit much, with how quickly the game throws tutorials at you.

Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening is more accessible than previous entries

Historically speaking, this franchise has not been known for being beginner friendly. Like previous entries in the series, you really must know what you’re doing. Thankfully, it’s easy enough to get a grasp on things than before. I do admit the tutorial sends you a lot of information very swiftly.

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The first few hours will hand-hold you through what you need to know and, thankfully, won’t charge you gold for your decisions. Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening does clump the main systems of the game into three sections: Dominion, Politics, and Battle.

It can be confusing to figure out what you're doing sometimes, and how you can start making a profit (Image via Koei Tecmo)

You’ll click on those and then a sub-menu icon to reach whatever you want in the game. Thankfully, while you’re making decisions and planning, time is stopped. You have to turn time back on for turns to continue.

Despite playing the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise since the Super Famicom days, I still found myself a bit overwhelmed with how much there is to know and do in the day-to-day of the game.

Thankfully, you don’t have to deal with each of your territories - you can focus on your capital and trust your subordinates to do the rest. They aren’t always that clever, though, so you may have to set out some orders for them.

You can easily see what cities are garrisoned and defensible (Image via Koei Tecmo)

Focusing on your main city makes things a little more manageable in this new strategy title — but you may not want to do that, and that’s fine. However, you can also adjust the difficulty in a wide variety of ways. You can make the game as easy or as hard as possible.

Before your playthrough and even during, you can change the speed of your troop restoration (and your opponents). You can reduce the number of disasters the nation endures and how quickly things are produced via Labor. It’s easily one of my favorite parts of the game, making it far more accessible.

Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening quickly becomes engrossing

Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening definitely has a “one more turn” factor about it. Despite not being an easy game, it’s immensely satisfying to start figuring things out. Recruiting powerful samurai, sneaking around, setting enemy villages on fire, and making or breaking alliances is so much fun.

The biggest part, as far as I’ve seen, is the political game and developing your domain. There are so many options when it comes to making allies and enemies. You can see clearly how much people trust you, so your enemies are pretty easy to catch. However, the sheer volume of numbers in the game can be overwhelming.

It's not easy to build a perfect city (Image via Koei Tecmo)

You will spend a great deal of time figuring out which buildings to set up and policies to focus on in Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening. It’s the biggest part of the game, and mastering the micromanaging facets will make your gameplay experience more enjoyable.

It’s not always easy to discern between the right and wrong decision, but your officers tend to express if they’re confident about certain steps. However, what frustrates me about this game the most is how the UI is far from intuitive.

I never did promote this unit in my playthrough - they left my service (Image via Koei Tecmo)

More often than not, I had difficulty figuring out exactly where I needed to be for certain aspects. I agreed to give an ally a certain land-owning rank, and no matter what I did, it wasn’t the right rank. There was nothing in the game that could tell me what I was doing wrong, either.

Once you get a handle on what you’re doing in Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening, it feels amazing to play. I was frustrated for the first few hours, then it all opened up to me. I spent more time on strategizing and politics than on actual battle, though.

Battle is challenging but also simple at the same time

You can’t win the game if you don’t take on enemy castles. By claiming a capital city, you take their territory and thus expand your domain. You must set a few cities to come together to do battle, and then you can also summon allies — if they wish to assist you.

While you can tactically outplay the enemy, sometimes you want to smash them with superior numbers (Image via Koei Tecmo)

Combat is incredibly important - you can pull enemies away from each other and set up pincer attacks. However, the units more or less attack and use special abilities as they see fit in Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening. If your unit has higher morale and more units, they’re almost assured to win.

That’s been my experience, at the very least. I smashed through almost every enemy if I waited to overpower them. Of course, that means I also had to put effort into sabotaging them and allying with people I had no interest in battling.

The visuals are serviceable, but the dub is peculiar

I enjoyed the cutscenes in Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening, from the art to how the story is told in these moments. The graphics are simple enough. The brilliant colors make it easy enough to see which parts of the map are controlled by which faction. The character portraits are also great, from the custom characters to the important ones.

Part visual novel, part tactical strategy sim (Image via Koei Tecmo)

However, I’m baffled by the game moving to an English dub. For years, Nobunaga’s Ambition either had no voice or it was all in Japanese. It made sense, and I didn't assume otherwise. Now, I don’t hate the dub - it’s perfectly fine. But it was just a strange choice for me.

In conclusion

Even though Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening has more beginner-friendly options, I do think it still has a fairly steep difficulty of entry curve. It’s fun, and I love spending time min-maxing in my domain to conquer yet another of my neighbors.

It’s not a game where I felt punished for my playstyle, which is important. You can definitely make it easier or harder, as much as you’d like to. It feels like part visual novel with all the cutscenes - but you can simply reject watching them without penalties.

Nobunaga's Ambition Awakening is a fun, challenging game, but I’d be remiss for not pointing out how clunky and confusing it can be. Once you’ve spent some time absorbing what all the menus do, unifying Japan is just a hop, skip, and jump away. Even if your only experience with the franchise is Pokemon Conquest, it's worth a peek if you love strategy games.