Adam Beckett

Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence

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I never heard before of the "Nobunaga Series" of Japanese Strategy games. They are made/published by Koei/Tecmo for the last 30 years.

Steam Version: http://store.steampowered.com/app/392470/
Playstation Version available too.

I found some user reviews on Steam, which peaked my interest:

"Here's the deal. Koei has been making these two grand strategy game series called Romance of the Three Kingdom and Nobunaga's ambition. You're placed on a large map of China and/or Japan respectively and you take control of one of the historical warlords in the period. You're given control of the finances, diplomacy, and the military features of the realm and you're given the huge task of reuniting a tortured land and placing it under your control."

(Source: http://steamcommunity.com/id/TheDarkWriter/recommended/392470/)

"I have never played a Koei strategy game before to this was all new to me, but I followed the fun (if long) tutorial through to the end and started an easy campaign as the Oda on the "Birth of Nobunaga" scenario, I then proceeded to play faaaaaaar longer than intended this afternoon. 


I had a blast. Coming from a Shogun 2 total war fanatic standpoint, this provides a very different experience, that somehow sits between a Paradox game like CK2 (or Sengoku) and something a bit lighter like the total war series.

Battles are automatically fought out as the month progresses and you can dip in and try to turn them in your favour if you want to. There are some great positioning based mechanics at work here that make positioning your forces or paramount importance to victory, attacking from different directions and defending or bypassing choke points, are both important things to understand, and provide a lot of enjoyment.

Management of your "Officers" is a huge part of the game and I'd say this makes it more like the aforementioned Paradox titles, land management is also important, and takes up much of your time.

 

There is a fun internal and external political system to maneuver and this allows you to do some very fun things like forming coalitions against powerful enemies and calling friends to fight for you, you can even mediate peace between two antagonists!"

 

(Source: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197987848369/recommended/392470/)

I played the tutorial scenario myself. Disclaimer: I don't play JRPGs, I don't know what happens in Final Fantasy VII, nor do I play 'Japanese games', in general. I am not one of 'those' people.

Your father died. The leader of the Oda Clan. You play a young Daimyo/Lord who engages in a dialog with his Sensei. This older man was a loyal servant to your father, and he wants to commit ritual suicide, because he thinks, he failed his former master, teaching YOU (the character you play/you, the player). In a series of back and forth Plato like dialogs, presented like a Gameboy/Nintendo game (portraits left and right, click button for more dialog), you - the player - are introduced to the game mechanics and systems (dialog about politics and the importance of diplomacy and what wise men should do, did really remind me of Plato's Dialogues!). In the end of each novella length (but strangely enjoyable) conversation section, you get to play what you just learned (or rather execute it), before the next tutorial section. Meanwhile, in the background, you hear a chirpy grand orchestral score, like David Lean decided to make a last Cinemascope attempt, in the 1960s, making an adventure movie, based in Japan.

I wish, Paradox would play this game. Everyone can learn a lesson or two, from this kind of character driven tutorial. As far as I can see, the games emphasis is on grand strategy. There are numerous advisers, you get to send all over Japan. Diplomacy plays a far bigger role than I can make out in Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis IV (or any Total War game, goes without saying). The real-time battles play out like Total War Arena. Fast and without a lot of depth. But overall, this game is really intriguing, if you like Japan and Strategy games.

Needless to say, I am of the School of thought who thinks tutorials are not a waste of developer resources and an afterthought, but are the true masterclass in game design. Being able to teach new players to understand your game, never having played one, in interesting and engaging ways should be your highest goal, after having nailed and balanced your game systems. But that is a topic for another discussion.

While it has the typical 'Japanese' style elements, it is NOT an 'anime' game, like Valkyrie Chronicles. Like Troy, I could not make myself play that one, no matter how good people said it was. It has also the strengths of Japanese games, as I see them: strong storytelling through characters, strong emphasis on game mechanics, thoughtful design and gorgeous art. 

It is pretty expensive, which I cannot scratch my head around, why this is the case. A lower price point would make curious people more willing to check it out. Apparently the Japanese/Chinese versions are expensive too.

I am not expecting to hear a Three Moves Ahead Podcast about this, but I still wanted to point some of you towards this title.

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So, this doesn't have anything to do with Dynasty Warriors, right? There's no direct control of a warrior in combat, it's all moving squads around and positioning and such?

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This is a full on strategy game.

 

Heck yeah, confusion is in the game (love that effect from RTK series), gonna keep eyes on the price, might just buy it soon either way since I haven't had a good session of Koei strategy games in a while.

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So, this doesn't have anything to do with Dynasty Warriors, right? There's no direct control of a warrior in combat, it's all moving squads around and positioning and such?

 

Yep. No single warrior combat. You always control an army or armies. As I mentioned before, it is much like Total War Arena. A light-version of Total War's RTS battles.

The emphasis of the game is much more on the grand strategy part. You get to choose between thousands(!) of advisors and officers and can even create your own ones in an editor. What I find very appealing is the fact, that the game found a way to overcome the analysis/paralysis dilemma, I always find so impenetrable in Paradox titles, with their walls of Excel-spreadsheet data dumps, not knowing what is important and what not. What to click on. Every character, every city development, every diplomatic action allows only for a few choices/upgrades, each turn. You are 'guided' - as far as I can see - in a more new X-Com kind of way.

I only dipped into this title. I have no clue how good or deep the game AI and diplomatic system goes, but more experienced players praise especially this latest game of the series.

 

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Yeah, this game is amazing. And a very well done port - runs very smooth.

 

I will comment on a few things:
 

- One of the most interessing thing is how Nobunaga´s Ambition does have this really amazing sound and visual design that give the feel of japanese period piece movie or a japanese historical drama for television, the music have epic and orchestral feeling but without becoming "noisy" as is rather more relaxing, again, the soundtrack have a very movie or epic drama theme. The sounds are very well done, from the confirmation voices to that choral chant they do when they win battle (I am playing with japanese voices)  the character portraits are more close to historical with a bit mix of how (maybe the likeness of particular actors? but this only wild guessing) popular culture often view this characters. The games looks really good.

 

- Battles are really fun and very fluid, almost no loadings, when two or more armies meet on the map you can either let them auto-resolve or take direct control and all done very fast and smooth. The only thing I have figured out very well is how use "tactics", which are some special abilities which you officer might had (I think they can have only one) and each one have different ways to be used and countered.

 

- I recommend playing the tutorial and them the birth of Nobugana scenary, as both give you a very good tutorial on how to play.

 

- The game uses a quest system, to guide both the player and the game in a more historical way, but don´t force it´s hand, as you can ignore or do different things. Per exemple, on of the initial missions in Birth of Nobunaga is improving your relation ship with some tribes (which the game use to teach you this feature), later they give you a mission on attacking another clan castle and so on.

 

- You can play as any clan in all maps (unless I am wrong) and even set some special options, such if officers will have historical lifespans or not and other stuff.

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I have very good memories of RTK, especially how you could handle your generals/advisors and the diplomatic part of the game. I'm now mostly playing EU4, but this game will certainly get my attention soon too.

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The game won´t stop to amaze me, played a lot more and this is quickly becaming my GOTY.

 

- Loved the fact that it does have a system where you can interact with the Imperial Court and get titles or make sure someone else got one.

 

- Historical Quests might be triggered after sometime passes, at least for me, after doing maybe four in "Nobunaga´s Birth" I got the other ones after a few years.

 

- Much like in King of Dragon Pass, your advisor often hint what you could build or do.

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Yeah, I too was torn apart by either this, or MGSV or Grandia II or Amnesia: Memories. In the end, between not begin 100% sure if I could really play a stealth game well enough to enjoy it, since while I was able to finish the main mission in Ground Zeroes, I am stuck trying to do the other ones (that unlock stuff for MGSV) and the high price of the game, I decided, specially after that Koei stream which calmed my fear of a bad port, on Nobunaga and Amnesia: Memories (also because the discount)*. But I do plan to later buy MGSV.

Anyway...

Right now I did a rather large scale invasion against Saito clan, it was very fun - I used the feature to ask other clans which are allied to me send relief forces to some key points (you can choose where your allies should appear) while I mobilized all my armies to attack their main castles, thanks to them I was able to capture all without running out of supplies (another game mechanic, your armies once deployed take some of your supplies, which you gain by harvests, based on their size, and consume them along the march, so they have the whole "supplies for 120 days" thing which you should keep in mind as running out of them is often instant disaster most of times).

What I am not sure, if I take over Saito too early, because once I finished a Historical Quest, the cutscene suggest that Oda will invade them, but I don´t know if I should wait the next quest or not. Still, it was lot fun.

* By the way - Amnesia: Memories isn´t that horror game with same name but, but a Visual Novel.

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Until there is a better non-Japanese language understanding of the conditions and triggers I guess the absolute safest way to ensure you don't invalidate a historical quest is to just follow the objectives given and not go beyond that.

 

Assuming I didn't miss a quest somewhere due to myself or the AI's actions breaking the condtions required for it to trigger then there is a fairly large chunk of turns between the historical quest to invade the Saito with Asakura assistance and the next historical quest that follows it. Without trying to spoil too much for you the next historical quest suggests that Oda Nobuhide's ambitions to conquer Mino reached a bit of stalemate up against the forces of the Saito, Asakura and Azai. I personally don't know how flexible the trigger conditions for the next chronological quest are, I only took the quest objective castle-town in Mino, but outright conquering the Saito definitely seems like it could cause the next historical quest to not trigger for story spoiler reasons.

 

Although anyone familiar with Oda Nobunaga's life-story can probably spot why the Saito likely need to be alive.

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Until there is a better non-Japanese language understanding of the conditions and triggers I guess the absolute safest way to ensure you don't invalidate a historical quest is to just follow the objectives given and not go beyond that.

 

Assuming I didn't miss a quest somewhere due to myself or the AI's actions breaking the condtions required for it to trigger then there is a fairly large chunk of turns between the historical quest to invade the Saito with Asakura assistance and the next historical quest that follows it. Without trying to spoil too much for you the next historical quest suggests that Oda Nobuhide's ambitions to conquer Mino reached a bit of stalemate up against the forces of the Saito, Asakura and Azai. I personally don't know how flexible the trigger conditions for the next chronological quest are, I only took the quest objective castle-town in Mino, but outright conquering the Saito definitely seems like it could cause the next historical quest to not trigger for story spoiler reasons.

 

Although anyone familiar with Oda Nobunaga's life-story can probably spot why the Saito likely need to be alive.

 

Thanks, actually I am slight beyond that part.

 

Nobuhide already died and Nobunaga is the leader of the clan, the Battle of Okehazama and the Unification of the Clan are done. Dosan Saito just died, which triggered the cutscene where Nobunaga talks about invade Saito.

 

One of the most interessing systes inside the game is the "Policy" tab, where you can enact several reforms, each one does have a cost and does require toward either progressive or conservative or (and) some previous reforms, but this also affect how your officers related to you, since each one does have it own "tenet" which they follow (also some specific reforms, affect their loyalty, like the "Old Fief Assurance" which lower the loyalty of your progressive followers, or "Meritocracy" which improve the loyalty of follower with high attributes, but lower those with lesser attributes). Some things you can build in towns also affect this progressive (Teahouse, Cathedral and others) or conservative (Temple). Maybe, early on, some reforms and how progressive or not you are affect when western merchants does show up (I guess, really not sure).

 

 

Edit:

Oh, I just forget to add

 

I did start a second game, on the "God of War Descend", but I did choose a neighbor clan and end losing since the leader died around that period and the clan goes to the hand of Kagetora, but even so he got his own historical quests (I guess that you could continue playing as him, if you set up character to be not limited by their real life span), then I start another game as Kagetora, and it have been lot of fun.

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Just a small notes:

 

The game does have its own Achivement system, where you unlock special officers (that you could set up if they appear or not) and the in the profiles of all the game officers, where you could check in which of the Nobunaga game this or that officer first showed up or not.

 

That "God of War Descend" can be really difficult, I had the quest to take two Hojo castles, but turn out that face the Hojo and Takeda was a bad idea. Still, during this game I had my first "mega battle" (I think that is the term they use), which is special kind of battle, where all your armies and all of your enemies army fact each other in a single battle, face to face.

 

Started a game on the Birth of Nobunaga, but this time playing with the Otomo clan and the campaign have been really good so far.

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Is there a game mode that just goes without the quest stuff, grand strategy style? The parts of EU4 that always bugged me is when they have events to try and force things to be historically accurate, and it sounds like this quest system is doing roughly the same thing.

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The historical events and quests are entirely optional and you can disable them if you want, even if you do enable historical quests you don't have to follow them if you do not wish to. If you want you can disable historical events, historical quests and even make everyone live forever. The game is far more sandbox Grand Strategy with the ability to follow historical events for a cinematic, narrative reliving of history than it is structured cinematic, narrative scenarios with elements of sandbox Grand Strategy. Want to begin a campaign as the Matsudaira using the Rise of Nobunaga scenario and totally rewrite history by wiping out the Oda before Nobunaga even comes to power? You can do that, as long as the Imagawa don't try and smash you first.

 

After all you this is a game where you can create your own custom clan with your own custom characters, with their own custom backstories, start practically where ever you want and create your own zany alternate histories. What if the gods of Olympus invaded Japan? ^_^

 

Seriously, the number of customisation options there are to tailor the difficulty settings to your liking was mindblowing enough before I even got into messing around with whether fictional maidens are born, whether maidens can be officers, character lifespan and such. Unless you want to follow the historical quests to check out the story and beautiful cinematics, you can basically think of the different historical scenarios as different starting points to try out, similar to the different bookmarks in Paradox games. There's even a fictional scenario that involves all of the famous clans and their most famous daimyos starting out roughly equal in size and power in a battle royale for the Shogunate.

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Starting to get into it and I'm enjoying it a lot but man it does come off very strongly as a console port with its really bizarre UI.  Left click to move and attack took some time getting used to.

 

Also I'm at that point where I need to let chunks of my clan automate and it's again, little strange.

 

Edit: Oh wow SAMURAI CATS mode... it's an actual thing in this game!?!

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Yeah, Samurai cats where real, in mean as a option XD.

 

By automated you mean create province and assign a regent? yeah you could do that, but I don´t think is much forced, also I guess in some options you can set how much you have maximum area your daymio can rule.

 

In my current game as Ouchi clan is going really well, while I haven´t conquered all of Kyushu, I did managed to expand enough to cause several smaller clans to submit to me as vassals. I like since this kind avoids the clean up phase in many strategy games.

 

- In some games the AI manages to do the historical quest, in other not - in my current game the Imagawa crushed the Oda. But I think Echigo and another clan are doing really well in their historical quests.

 

- Also I noticed the AI react soon as you order some army to move, which kind avoid the "I move my armies very close to crush you before you have chance to react" that often happen in several strategy games.

 

- However, some historical quest can be a bit vague: How I get the globe? only now I noticed there is different kinds of ports, and I need six trade ports (so I might need to rearrage my provinces).

 

One thing I really like about this game, is that the overall feeling of begin some kind of Taiga Drama, thanks to the music and visuals.

 

-

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I think in my first game I played way beyond the victory condition and hence my clan got unnecessarily too big to be managed without maxing out on provinces.

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Still digging into this game, it's really good but also commits few atrocious design mistakes that just shouldn't be there in 2015... like not showing unit's attack power.

 

Truly a diamond (core game) in a rough (UI mishaps).  So good but so rough.

 

Time to make my anime custom officers to rule the era in glorious anime weeboo tide.

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I bought this yesterday. It's a bit overwhelming at first. The built in quest system is nice, but it also causes random shifts in opinion with other clans which has thrown a lot of money in the form of diplomatic visits down the drain. I want to see this to the conclusion, but I'm also looking forward to playing a game with that stuff turned off.

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