Sphere of Influence or Awakening?

[Viltae]

I imagine this has already been covered somewhere, but I can't find what I'm looking for: I'm torn between Sphere of Influence and Awakening. I've had enough of Total War, Europa Universalis or Crusader King and I'm looking for a new style of conquest and war! So what's the strategic depth of these two? I have heard that Sphere of Influence is deeper and more challenging, but is that really true?
If anyone has played both, I'd be interested to hear what you think !

[Silva]

My 2 cents as someone who's also a fan of Pdox, TW and Civ games:

- SoI is considered the all-around better product, all it's systems fit together nicely design wise and there is no big problem. But I find it shallow (except domestics) - diplomacy, war, tactical battes, officers management, etc. are pretty simplistic systems coming from Civs, Pdox and TW games (specially late ones like Three Kingdoms). Chances are you'll find it more on the casual side coming from western games.

- Awakening on the other hand, has better-realised core ideas - officer management is deeper and more impactful, diplomacy more nuanced (with a great "negotiation table" function), war is deeper, tactical battles depper, AI is better, etc. But it's kind of a mess right now with bugs and QoL problems. Assuming future updates fix those, I can see it surpassing SoI pretty easily.

My verdict: go with Awakening. This series main differential coming from western games is the Human Resources (officers) aspect anyway, and it's the best it ever was in Awakening.

[BloodyPork]

Sphere of Influence is neither deeper or more challenging. Idk how some people would even say that, i suppose it's because it's the FIRST and ONLY Nobunaga Ambition game that came out in english in a completed state? Let's recap NA games availability to us english players:

RIse to Power: no english PUK, incomplete
Iron Triangle: no english PUK, incomplete
Tendou: no english
Sphere of Influence: COMPLETE
Ascension: abandoned by developer, still full of silly bugs at current state
Taishi: no english PUK, incomplete
Awakening: still has not receive final update, and therefore the current state is incomplete.

This is precisely why SoI is rated the most highly among most english players, because they don't have access to other completed NA games.

Here's what I think,

Rise to Power: mortars are fun. Game feels too easy, terrible AI.
Iron Triangle: Super addictive, maybe I spent the most hour in this. Building development feels a lot like rtk 11.
Tendou: it's like an improved Iron Triangle, the building road thingy is fun. Can play as female kenshin.
Sphere of Influence: good game outside combat, but combat/battle is the least fun imo. The manual combat sucks, and the combat in the map is less exciting than in the previous games.
Ascension: garbage. AI is absolutely terrible, worst AI in any nobu games, some of them can't develop because they don't have access to certain resources. They don't develop fief either.
Taishi: best combat system and mechanic. Troops gather together first before engaging in major combat. However outside combat it is barebones and missing loads of feature from previous games.
Awakening: loads of neat addition, some elements worse then in previous game. Battles are similar to SoI outside manual combat, trickle down. Overall actually maybe this is the best game because the AI seem to be better.

Now, out all of all this, SoI got the least fun combat honestly. The manual combat is just terrible, and the auto combat is just uh, boring, it's similar to Awakening but at least Awakening got a much better manual combat.

[Viltae]

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to go with what you say: Awakening it is, then!

[Silva]

Awakening is a bit expensive right now (at least here in Brazil) so there's that. And ignore the deluxe edition, it's mostly fluff.

Porky: yeah, never understoood people saying SoI has depth either. Have you played Tendou (the one which never got an English translation)? I see a lot of Asian players saying it's the best in the series.

[XYZEXPIRED]

@Viltae: Awakening if you like events, it does better than SOI. The siege battle is also good but it should have more improvement. I like it, it were challenging play as minor than in SOI.
SOI is good for mass battle which actually determine the outcome of the clan battle should they win or lose, nice perk is you gain random trait to teach to retainer in those mass battle and not in regular battle. It's easy to play as minor clan to win in the game, you can play as crappy Hienuki or Shiba clan and beat the Nanbu up north which Awakening, it's not impossible yet but it seem impossible for me to beat it right now even with regular clan (outside of the major clan).
@Silva: Even when playing non-English patch, Tendou is also one of my fav back then. One thing it did right is they have supply sytems like in ROTK 13 and 14, cutting it off mean dead for the enemy. I was able to trap 1 millions Uesugi Kenshin men in the castle and win (ridiculous soldiers number). The thing is actually did right was you can build anywhere on the map for the road (mostly anywhere), and laid or spam trap. It shouldn't be that way but it was fun.

[BloodyPork]

Yeah Tendou is really good. Maybe the best one overall. Maybe it doesn't have features that we like from newer series but during that time, it was pretty much a straight improvement from Iron Triangle which was also a great game (this doesn't usually happen with Koei, like you see this game it has things that are worse than previous game). I played it with english UI fan patch, even this handicapped experience doesn't stop me from thinking it's the best. By today it should be even more playable because now you have like google translate camera so you can even read the other texts and stuff.

[Ger]

Koei has always said that they try to make each new game a different experience.
Long-term players know that gameplay change drastically from one game to the next in their NA and RTK franchises.

For example, RTK9 & 11 essences did not return until 14, where some of their basic mechanics were re-utilized mixed with new features, like officers' positive and negative traits.

Sphere of Influence or Awakening? I say both bc they transmit their own feelings and have their own identity.
In resume, they are two good and different experiences. They aren't rivals.

[HippieJesus]

I have played various incarnation of this series since the very first NES version of both ROTK and NA...yes, I'm old. As mentioned above, each game is usually a very different experience, by design. I think the NES versions tended to stay the closest to one another, but even they had updated/different mechanics in each one. Once the PS2 era hit, they realyl started to make each new version radically different from one another so there's always a reason to try out a new game and it also lets people continue to play the older ones if you still like them. Personally, I continued to play ROTK 7 and 9 for YEARS bc i simply didn't like the later versions as much.

So really the answer is try both, but dont expect them to play the same.

[BloodyPork]

Originally posted by Ferginomicon:

I have played various incarnation of this series since the very first NES version of both ROTK and NA...yes, I'm old. As mentioned above, each game is usually a very different experience, by design. I think the NES versions tended to stay the closest to one another, but even they had updated/different mechanics in each one. Once the PS2 era hit, they realyl started to make each new version radically different from one another so there's always a reason to try out a new game and it also lets people continue to play the older ones if you still like them. Personally, I continued to play ROTK 7 and 9 for YEARS bc i simply didn't like the later versions as much.

So really the answer is try both, but dont expect them to play the same.

ROTK 7 has so many things they got rid off forever in future games: poetry contest, duel contest, fighting tiger, senior vassals voting for successor of dead liege, etc