PC Game Review - Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence is the latest “grand strategy” game from Koei Tecmo which has been known for creating highly addictive historical simulation games. At first when you first start this game, maybe we can be overwhelmed by receiving all the information provided in the game. Because there are so many things that we have to learn and master from the start of playing.

Nobunaga’s Ambition is not a simple game and is quite difficult to master. But after successfully mastering this game, without realizing it by yourself, you will be busy spending time fighting against other daimyo, and trying to control all of Japan from night to dawn the next day!

Conquest & Domination
In this game, you have the opportunity to become one of the clan leaders in Japan called the daimyo. You are free to play by choosing a clan that fits the history, such as Oda, Takeda, Date, and so on, or you can also choose to create a new clan and try to rule Japan.

How you unify the entire territory of Japan involves various types of conflict, politics, diplomacy, and trying to manage your clan so that it becomes the most dominant clan. The presentation of this game uses a retro visual style with an interface that looks complicated at first. The tutorials taught appear long and require players to listen properly. This may seem very complicated and requires persistence to play, but indeed this is the main attraction of Nobunaga’s Ambition.

At the beginning of the game, you can choose various types of scenarios related to the history of the Japanese war in the Sengoku period. Several scenarios feature famous Japanese historical events such as the origin of Nobunaga Oda, the fight between Shingen Takeda and Kenshin Uesugi, and of course the epic war in the legendary Sekigahara. You are also free to determine the level of difficulty through the “In-Game Editor” feature, so you can decide for yourself how difficult or easy the game session is.

Managing a clan in this game requires attention to the details of the game. Each city has different needs, and you have to decide what tasks should come first in developing these cities. Each city has three development categories, namely: Crafts, Agriculture, and Conscript. Crafts is a city development that focuses on economic gain and generating new income. Agriculture makes your city more fertile so that you get a big harvest. While Conscript tells your officers to recruit residents, so that you have enough troops to fight.

Nobunaga’s Ambition game focuses on macro management where you have to manage the economy and use your diplomatic skills to build relationships, including building defenses and infrastructure that makes your city stronger and growing rapidly. As the game progresses, war will become a big part of this game. Each troop that you have is individually controlled by your subordinate officers, but from time to time you can also control the troops manually.

The mechanics of the real-time battles are a bit like the game Total War, but appear simpler and quite easy to master. Environmental conditions also affect the course of the fight, such as being in the forest can make your troops unknown to the enemy, or the surrounding barricades can restrain the enemy’s horse troops for example.

Each troop also has different skills, depending on the type of troop (Cavalry, Archer, Musket, etc.) and the ability of the officer who leads the troop. For example: Characters like Katsuie Shibata are more skilled at leading cavalry and can use the “Charge” skill to attack enemies quickly. While genius characters like Hanbei Takenaka can give false information to the enemy so that they become confused when fighting.

The Cloud of Wars
In general you can control all the diplomacy, politics, economy, and the course of development in each city. But as your clan gets bigger and more cities are controlled, you can create separate regions and have your trusted officers take care of these cities automatically. You can also get various benefits from the controlled regions, such as sending reinforcements during battles, or receiving donations of money from more prosperous cities for example.

Diplomacy plays a big part in this game. The diplomacy system in Nobunaga’s Ambition appears quite unique, because you have to send one of your subordinates to make visits to other clans in an interval of months. During this diplomatic visit, relations will increase and will be shown in the acquisition of points. For example: in diplomatic relations with a value of 60 and above, you can make a truce with an enemy clan, diplomacy of 80 and above allows your clan to make alliances with other clans.

Apart from building relationships, you can engage in various other types of activities that will influence the development of the clan. Starting from building new facilities, building fortifications, making better road routes, to forming coalitions with other clans to participate in a large-scale war.

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence is an addictive game full of complex gameplay elements. Overall, this game has a solid game concept and is full of challenges. Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence will be liked by fans who often play with this genre.

Scoring: 8/10
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Developer: Koei Tecmo
Genre: Strategy
Release: 01 September 2015
Platforms: PC, PS3, PS4

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