Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Review (PlayStation 4)

by Jim Smale · August 9, 2023

For this Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Review, we play as a daimyō, a powerful warlord in Japan’s Warring States Period, you will appoint lords and landholders to develop your territory. Challenge other clans in a war to seize more territory, and retainers who have earned merit can develop the territory.

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
13.47GB download size.
Platinum trophy.
Works on Playstation 5.
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 affair own, civil affair other clans, labor own, labor another clan, and disasters.
Each menu option has a tooltip to explain what they mean and 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 has you 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 via a 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 Civilisation 5 but set within feudal Japan.
The goal is to run your empire and expand it, take over other land/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 a 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 react to decisions you make, sometimes they make their own!
The menus are plentiful but once you get a grip of 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.

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Review Cons:

So much to take in and even after many hours you still feel underprepared.
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.

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening:

Official website.

Developer: KOU SHIBUSAWA

Publisher: KOEI TECMO

Store Links –

PlayStation

8/10
Graphics - 8/10
7/10
Sound - 7/10
6/10
Accessibility - 6/10
8/10
Length - 8/10
8/10
Fun Factor - 8/10

7.4/10

Summary

This game took me hours just to get to the point where I felt comfortable even discussing it, it’s on a higher entry point than the Crusader Kings games for me as I had to take so much information in. The initial setup tutorial tells you everything you need but it is a case of click here to do this click here to do that and my brain just doesn’t take it in in that way. I decided in the end to just play a few one-off scenarios and consult the ever-expanding codex of information and used it to answer my many questions. The thing is once you finally get into it all, you lose days to the game as it just gets so moreish and due to the nature of it all, at any time the plan you had can be tipped upside down. I love how much control it gives you and it feels like the narrative bends to my actions which is really cool. Overall this is a thinking gamer’s game and not for the faint-hearted. For the hours of time, you need to learn it all, the game rewards you with years of content and strategic fun!