For those who are struggling whether to get NOBUNAGA'S AMBITION: Sphere of Influence or this game :
I recommend this game if you like to create your own character, or clan, and do "roleplay" stuff.

+ Play as your selected character instead of the whole clan. If your clan is 'destroyed', you can still continue playing, serving the clan that destroyed yours. If your character dies, you can continue the game by selecting one of his/her relatives to play as next.
+ Improved combat. Some event battle are also 'improved', The most noticable one being the Battle of Nagashino (playing as the Oda).
+ Siege Battle. Unlike in SoI, the siege battle here is more detailed, to capture a castle you have to break in by force or you can also try to be 'sneaky', and finally surround the Tenshu (the fancy looking building).
+ You can upgrade any castle to a max level. Yes, ANY castles.
+ Friendship system. If you're friendly enough with someone, they will 'help' you in various ways. They will offer you some resources, gift, assist you in clan business such as constructions, reinforcements, and even offers you to marry their daugther.
+ Event Creator. If you like to mess around and create alternate history or something then this is for you.
+ All DLC scenario (From Sphere of Influence) are available.

Now, the 'not good' things :
- No Event Gallery.
- Some BGMs and Extra Characters from SOI are not available.
- You can't create events involving custom characters (besides the one you're playing as). Come on man...
- A certain fictional scenario is not available in the EN version.
- The AI is. . .lame, I guess? specificaly in resource management, they barely even upgrade their castles! Because of this most siege battles are kinda boring. I know there's an In-Game Editor but come on. . .

*Note that if you want to do Historical Events/Quests prior to Siege of Osaka (1614), I recommend getting the The Sphere of Influence version. Because in this version, the 'Betrayal/Defection' system is so overpowered that it often makes the conditions for the Events messed up, making you unable to do the Events/Quests. Plus in Sphere of Influence, you can view any events you've seen in the Event Gallery.

Do not buy this game and buy the original Sphere of Influence instead!
I'm a big fan of Koei's historical simulation game and have spent countless hours on them, but this is literally one of the most buggy product. This game is a big step back compared to ascension, let me explain some of the bugs.

- AI lords and daimyo does NOT trade resources, what this means is 90% of the daimyo and lords do NOT develop their land AT ALL because they are lacking wood and/or iron. So you can wait 50 in game years and some fief will have exactly the same facilities as what they started with in the beginning.
- AI lords and daimyo spend most of their gold income at policies. Like if they have income of 800 they spend 750 on policies... coupled with the problem above, they literally do not develop anything.
- If you are a retainer/chamberlain/lord/regent, your AI daimyo does not create other lords, which means your daimyo can conquer whole of Japan and the only lords are yourself and the lords that exist at the start of the scenario.
- Bow and Gun stats are reversed. Imagine how broken and stupid this is.
- The game looks fun at the beginning, playing as retainer, until you realized that all other retainer does not have a domain like yourself. Literally zero immersion once you realized this.

Once you know the ropes of this game, it is really stupidly easy compared to the original Sphere of Influence. For example you can try playing as the Uesugi in this game and compare it with the experience playing in the original game. Takeda in this game has no iron income, and therefore does not develop their fiefs whatsoever, so soon you have so much more troops and resources and conquer them easily. Also you can unrealistically entice Masayuki Sanada to defect immediately to your clan from the beginning of the game, because apparently he is unhappy to serve his dad Yukitaka because "he is weaker" according to the loyalty modifier. This basically sums up the incompetent AI and broken game mechanics of Ascension. In the original game, Takeda develop their fiefs and actually provide a challenge, and you can't steal his historically loyal officers easily.

Would recommend this game if the major bugs above are fixed in the future.

Hello, welcome to my 600+ (25 days in game) hour long review for a game I am going to overall say, “Yes buy it.” “BIG IF” you like strategy games. As I am someone who has over 600+ hours on this game it’s pretty safe to say I have played this game and I know what I am talking about. I’m going to be honest. I am no expert at this game, Only defeating 4 scenarios so far out 18 scenarios, I have not completed every scenario and defeated every stage of this game, because quite frankly, it is too much fun challenging myself playing as weaker daimyos (lords or warlords) in the early scenarios with less powerful clans running around, and fighting against impossible odds later in the same scenario if I did not build up fast enough. So check out my review first before you go with other reviews that are less than 40 hours, because chances are they started playing this game thinking they were gonna get a Dynasty Warriors (hack and slash) game and were like, “WTF is this?” and then they quit after 10 hours of scratching their heads and not understanding a thing about strategy games or KOEI games for that matter. If you’re looking for a mindless beat them up fighting adventure game move along and stop giving bad reviews to a game company that has been around for over 3 decades now producing strategy games. Go buy Dynasty Warriors 45 or whatever hack and slash game KOEI has produced lately, so maybe KOEI will continue to produce such classics games as these for their true AMERICAN fans.

That said, “Let’s get to the review!”

Ratings:
Graphics: 8 out of 10. It’s a strategy game.
Difficulty: 10 out of 10. You can ramp everything up and get slaughtered quite easily as a daimyo in the first month as a weaker ruler and even stronger ones, get double triple teamed by the computer.
Gameplay Domestic: 9 out of 10. Playing as a retainer doing your domestics for your village gets you recognized by your daimyo and he/she will grant you a territory as a Chamberlain. Continue doing missions to become a Lord. Continue doing that to become a Regent, or switch sides to another ruler. (Don’t reccomend doing that all the time.) Usually, some of the dumbest request to switch sides, makes no sense. I wish enemy daimyo’s would promise you more land, or their daughter if you marry them. Something in return instead of, or just switch to our side kind of deal. Though sometimes it’s a good idea if your daimyo is getting butchered, switching sides will save your lordship title. The idea is to become a lord or daimyo.
Gameplay Combat: 5 out 10. This is where things could be much improved, especially on rifles. In previous Nobunaga games, rifle units were slow moving, but devastatingly powerful units at range. This game makes combat seem too linear and predictable. If you don’t have a higher number of troops you lose, regardless if you have rifles and your enemy doesn’t. A lot of times I find myself automating the combat. I thought maybe if I increase my castle military proficiency I would do better in combat. That or may not be the case, but is just seems like if I have 23,000 troops I will destroy a bunch of 4,000 troops units unless they have over 23,000 troops in units altogether.
Replay Value: 10 for 10. I’ve played over 1000+ relaxing hours of downtime making my own clans of vocaloids and other anime type characters in the officer creation menu. Plus, I play as different officers & such. The only gripe I have is I’m a girl. Why can’t the girl characters have children? Only the men can have successors. Doesn’t make any sense. I know in history women were probably treated very poorly back in the 1500s, but it’s 2018. Let’s add a little of history breaking elements and let females have children even if they aren’t married or not.

Overall Summary:
Game opening: Excellent piece of cinematic cutscenes of music and sound; focused in on the daimyo who changed history, Oda Nobunaga and various clan flags circling about him during the Warring States period of Japan; Sengoku Jidai 1467-1615. Next, Ishida Mitsunari versus Ieyasu Tokugawa cutscene of Ishida a hand full of cavalry charging through enemy lines on horseback with guns drawn aimed at Ieyasu, while Ieyasu knocks over his seat angry drawing a katana at the defiant Ishida (which never happens in the game and probably never in history as depected.) Then, to a cutscene of Oda Nobunaga standing in space flipping his red cloak around and making eye contact with the viewer breaking the fourth wall in all his glory wearring western type plate armor before his unfortunate downfall to general Akechi Mitsuhide in the “1582 Like a Dream” scenario at the height of Nobunaga’s power, gone in a blink of an eye to traitorious rebellion. If you can get past that part, you’re probably hyped and thinking, “Wow, cannons and flintlock rifles being used in this game! I can’t wait to get rifles and use them on Takeda’s cavalry like in history, where the Nobunaga clan used rifles to end the most powerful cavalry of that time. WELL, let me stop you right here to gripe about this. The rifles in this game are practically worthless. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see how they have an effect what-so-ever in combat, because combat is based on one overall thing. Who has the most number of troops, which shouldn’t be the case. In history, smaller numbers of troops defeated vast and overwhelming odds based on leadership, ambush, surprise, and knowing your enemy, like it says in Sun Tzu’s Art of War Manuel. Also, in previous Nobunaga Ambition games, rifles were absolutely deadly and overpowered. As, they should be if used correctly. Humans even with full decked out Samurai armor on cannot survive small pieces of metal flying at hundreds of miles an hour and entering their body at high speeds of velocity without any ramifications. You die. Even in modern warfare military tanks get shredded by RPGs and tank buster guns. Metal armor doesn’t stop projectiles all the time. I digress.

Menu Screen: After you get past the cut-scene in the beginning which you can bypass anytime by pressing a key, you get a menu screen, during these times, load screens often prompt different characters who may or may not of existed back in the Feudal Warring States Period. You can select new game, load game, edit officers and such from here. You can also look at the officer directory too on officers you come in contact with in different scenarios you play. There’s also an option to post to Facebook, which I did not use.

New Game: Do the tutorial first. If you have never played this sort of game before, do the tutorial. Even if you are a veteran, KOEI is adept at revamping every strategy game they make. I’m not sure why they do this. But, just about all their strategy games no matter how similar in graphics, features, and/or the game’s progression is different in many ways.
Starting scenario games let’s you do a multiple amount of things before you even start playing depending on your time and ambition to change things in the game. No pun intended, but you can realistically change every scenario around and never play the same game twice in any given scenario by selecting “Edit Locations.” I rarely do this, because in one scenario alone, for instance the first scenario 1534 A.D. Birth of Nobunaga I counted 98 different clans you can play as. In each one of these clans average anywhere from 1 to 50+ officers depending on the clan. Bigger clans have more officers making it easier in some respects for you to be in that clan. But, there are weaker clans like the Mariyatsu clan which is located right next to Hojo clan. With this many clans and officers allows you to play the same scenario as different Daimyo, Lords, Chamberlains, and Retainers. You can even choose to make your clan provided you got creative before you started a new game and created your own characters and placed them correctly in the timeline of each scenario you may want to play.

Have fun. Hope this review helps you.

Let's start with the Pros:
-AI allies now fight on their own and you don't have to control all units on the battlefield really improve the dynamism of the battle.

-When die from the game, you have the option to let your heir or trusted retainer to carry on your new life, which increases replayability quite dramatically.

-The ability to have fictional son is a big bonus of this game compares to NA sphere of influence, also fictional son can also give birth to other fictional son, which allows your lineage last at least three generations.

-New battle formations and troop type combinations add complexity to the battle.

Next we will talk about the Cons:

-The fief is a twighlight zone has little connection to the outside world, no worry from invasion, you got shut off from the grand map and sent to this solitary confinement to make petite bonsai and glue together miniature buildings.

-You can declare independence from clan. Why can't you assimilate back to the clan instead of begging to be a vassal of a super power?

-This game says officer play and I thought everyone is playable. However, named tribe leaders are not playable without being absorb into your clan.

-When you complete all objectives if you dont press the mission complete button on upper right, Your daimyo's next agenda will be hindered? Isn't the daimyo suppose to be the one who decide when is the time to move to the next list of objectives?

-A few set of castle models doesn't reflect the true geographic features of castles on the grand map.

-Daimyo will not ever actively make province(s) besides assigning the player to be the regent.

-We still miss a scenario "osaka aftermath", which feature only in the japanese version. Will that be sold as a seperate DLC in the near future?

So I picked this game up after having it collect dust for years, I usually don't mind reviews too much, rather wanting to make my own opinion rather than letting it be influenced by others.

Now, I have BOTH games, Ascension and the regular SOI game, and I played SOI a lot before, and that game has very positive reviews. Now... Are both games similar? Pretty much so... It's basically the same game with the exception for a few things, making this as many say, a DLC rather than a stand alone game.

But take note! What most negative reviews here are regarding broken AI behaviour... The AI doesn't gather resources, so they can't upgrade and evolve... The AI doesn't create Houses if you have one, and this would break the game for many.

Now, I took notice of this and could confirm that the AI was a bit lackluster than on SOI, so I spend a good few days looking through the forums and other sites and most people are of this opinion... NOW, I did see someone making a comment on how to fox this, so I gave it a go, and I can confirm, that the fix actually does work!

Simply put, when you start a new game, you have to crank up the AI difficulty to the max! You may even give them some resource boosts, but I didn't see the need for it. The AI is perfectly capable to expanding and upgrading if you let everything stay on the default setting, BUT crank up the AI difficulty to the max. Problem solved for the most part. I've read there is a bug regarding muskets, but I'm not using those units yet, so I couldn't tell you.

So, what's the big difference between this game and SOI? Well you can play as a retainer here instead of the big boss himself, it gives the game a bit more depth if you are into that sort of thing, and also, I love city planing games, and the city building is a bit more complicated in this game, rather than in SOI.

Now, which game to pick if you have neither? If you just wanna raise an army and go conquer, then get SOI as many would recommend you, but if you want a bit more city development themed game in addition to conquest, give this a go. As noted earlier, it's basically the same two games with a little twist.

The only drawback I can mention is that KOEI Temco don't follow the trend and lower the price of ageing games so the price might be a bit steep to some, I get that. But I got the game at full price and I'm getting hours of enjoyment out of it. If you can't afford the game price, then whishlist it and get notified of sales.

This does some nice things to the original SOI but it also does some not so nice things.

PROS
- Naval and Siege battles.
- Battles have more depth.
- Addition of Lumber and Iron resources to manage.
- Playing as a retainer.
- Event Editor.

CONS
- Can only use "Charge" and "Loose" battle commands on your own officer now.
- Guns are bugged and weaker than Bows when all the in-game help says they are supposed to be stronger.
- Playing as a retainer breaks your clan due to bug(s). Your daimyo will never create any new houses or ever expand his castles lands.
- Bugged AI will not buy Iron or Lumber like the player. If an AI lord doesn't not have the resources at their base(s) they never upgrade their holdings.
- Removed Horses and Firearms resources.
- Event Editor doesn't let you directly target your custom officers.
- Regents and their management have been simplified. You just assign them a base, a target and a "attack people besides your target" toggle.
- Your Regents can no longer send/receive resources, and you can't issue them any orders at all.

Until the bugs I cannot recommend this game. Buy the original Sphere of Influence instead.

Don't get confused by the most reviews here, they were written before the game actually got updated. It has more features than SOI + you don't have to buy extra dlc's, they are included in this game. You could say this game is a mix of Civilization and Total War in the Sengoku period.

If you are really into the "Time of the Warring States" (sengoku jidai), you should totally buy this game. (Just get it in a sale for 50% or even less)

If you expect a game like TW: Shogun 2 you are wrong.

This game has a lot of in-depth strategy when it comes to building, council your city, bringing prosperity to your domain, keeping your officers at bay with gifts, fiefs or just victorious battles, preparing for war, diplomacy and colluding/enticing with officers from other factions, where you can go from just pacifying for some months to defecting with their whole castle/s. I really liked the video sequences and the ingame scenes, because they give you a short view on many of the historical characters involved in this game, if you already know them or don't like them, you can either skip the video or fast forward the scene. You can also add your own officers and create your own events or, if you like to, you can become an independent clan leader. What's new to this game is, the "Officers Play" which is actually interesting and fun, but can be quite repetitive after some time. I actually liked to be just a substitute to a chamberlain/lord, where you have your own "playing field" to build on while accomplishing goals for the missions your Lord gave you. This game has a lot of historical information you can obtain, which is great, but it is also easy to block you out on a lot of events, because you expand your territory too fast or marry one of your children to some retainer or lord. I played multiple clans in different times/scenarios and always learned some new things I missed out before, because of my gameplay or the AI doing uncalculated moves, which i actually liked, because it never got boring.

It falls kind of flat when it comes to combat, not comparable to a total war game, but i would say it's average and if you really play the battles like they are meant to be, also challenging on higher AI levels. The game becomes a bit boring later on when you rule like half of the map, because it's literally just sending armies to the castles you want to conquer, while you have more than enough ressources.

All in all it's more than an average game when you are interested in this time period, if you are not interested at all, i don't think you should play it, but you should keep an eye on this game series in the future. With some optimizations to the series in the coming years, it could turn into a game like TW Shogun 2 or probably better and I would highly welcome that.

Full price game for a the same game you already have. This should've been a patch or dlc.

Ascension is the kind of update that feels as large and game changing as Mount & Blade is to Mount & Blade: Warband. Whatever complexity was missing in Sphere of Influence was added to this expansion. I am completely engrossed in the management and strategizing in my small, six castle realm. Not to mention even being able to choose to play as retainers, making the game that much more satisfying as you climb the political ladder from officer to Shogun.

Another great addition was the new officer view in battle phases. An amount of realism is now a part of the battles with so many conditions and formations you can deploy. Not to mention the simplistic yet fun siege battles added in Ascension.

I feel a lot more invested in my retainers when I can befriend them and acknowlede their accomplishments with rewards,

I can feel myself playing this game for hundred of hours as I do with most grand strategy games I enjoy. Recommend this game as much as possible for strategy lovers and people who enjoy games like ROTK, Crusader Kings, and Total War.

Dont understand the negative reviews at all for this game. Im starting to question whether any of you have actually played a KOEI game before. This is exactly what you would expect from a historical simulation. KOEI is by far the best at this genre. Play anything else and you sell yourself short. I guess some people who bought Sphere of Influence might be disappointed if they thought that the interface or game maps appearance would change drastically and that this would be an entirely new game. Its not. However the improvements in AI, revamped battles adding siege and naval, and the "start as an officer" play mode option makes this by far a better option to purchase. Especially considering original SOI and Ascension were the same price at the time i purchased. I played every other KOEI game on console (playstation1-3) and was concerned that on the computer controls would be janky or just not as easy to manuever. No worries. Still easily accessed menus and overall control of the interface. I would suggest KOEI include controller compatibility in future games considering they already have the games mapped for that on console. I mean why not include controller function if its the code is already there? IDK maybe there is a legitimate reason but i cant figure out why. In summary this is a great game and exactly what i come to expect from KOEI over the years. Anyone familar with KOEI or this genre of games should buy regardless of $60 price. Worth every bit of money.