NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Awakening Complete Edition Review – The Greatest Feudal Lords Await!

by Jim Smale · Published June 10, 2025 · Updated June 10, 2025

NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Awakening Complete Edition review – Step into the turbulent Sengoku era and command legendary warlords in this grand strategy masterpiece. With expanded scenarios, enhanced mechanics, and a wealth of historical depth, this Complete Edition delivers the ultimate experience in feudal conquest!

NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Awakening Complete Edition Review Pros

Decent graphics.
12.3GB download size.
Free DLC adding a new officer.
Full touchscreen support and is the superior way to play the game.
Mouse control support, and you can set it to be left or right-handed.
The game is perfectly fine to play on the big screen with the controller.
Autosave can be set to monthly, seasonal, off, and annually.
Six difficulties – very easy, easy, normal, hard, exhard, and custom.
Custom difficulty settings – AI aggressiveness, AI level, gold income clan, gold income other clans, harvest own clan, harvest other clans, soldier restoration speed own clan, soldier restoration speed other clans, civil affairs own, civil affairs other clans, labor own, labor another clan, and disasters.
Each menu option has a tooltip to explain what it means and what to do.
Can Invert camera axis.
You can edit what songs play and at what key moments in the game.
The gallery menu shows off viewed cutscenes, officer gallery, and events.
Deep officer creation tool for custom officers, historical officers, and extra officers.
Starting a game requires you to choose a scenario and a clan; you can do any combination.
Ten historical scenarios to choose from.
Ninety-four clans to choose from, you can choose by name, or use the map to pick by location.
Each clan has a difficulty rating system.
Fast loading times.
Strategy gameplay.
Demo play – at any time, have the computer take over for you for as long as you want.
Save when you want.
Think Civ 5 but set within feudal Japan.
The goal is to run your empire and expand it, take over other lands/regions, and take part in wars.
All actions play out via in-game days, you can advance time to speed this up.
Highly detailed map.
The tutorials are on everything new, but you can press the help button whenever you want or go into the menu.
A thinking gamer’s game.
Play how you want.
Shortcut buttons show on the HUD.
You do have so much control over how the game plays out as the AI reacts to decisions you make, sometimes they make their own!
The menus are plentiful, but once you get a grip on them, they offer anything and everything you need to succeed.
40th anniversary content, which is nearly a full game’s worth of content in itself, with new scenarios and abilities.
Cool-looking war animations.
Every game and every scenario is unique.
Offers 100s of hours of the game.
An excellent fit on the handheld.
The game offers more bonus scenarios on top of the Anniversary content.
All previously released pre-order bonus content is in the game.

NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Awakening Complete Edition Review Cons

You cannot transfer or save data between the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 versions.
So much to take in, and even after many hours, you still feel underprepared.
No in-game achievements system.
Takes a long time to get going.
The menus are so daunting, with so much text and numbers bombarding you.
Had the AI make a few bonehead decisions at times.
Using a controller is fine, but it does show its clunkiness at times, especially if you need to act quickly.