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.

However, for the longest time American and Europe gamers have been given a raw deal. Koei has always given us the raw game, 1.0, without any of the accompanying DLC in the Power-Up Kit. This happened time and again during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series and continued throughout the Nobunaga's Ambition series. This is DLC that added additional features to the game. Features such as new cities, new officers, foreign nations interfering positively or negatively for your faction, enchanted items or magic that change the way battles are fought. All sorts of cool stuff which never made it to us American gamers. We got the base game and that's it. If you didn't like it, you had to either pirate the game or you were out of luck. And even then, the pirated games were poorly translated.

This time, the situation is different. The game itself comes prepackaged with all DLC in the Power Kit enabled. All sorts of stuff has been added to the game since it has been released and with this special edition release, you essentially get all of that for free. The only thing you'd have to pay for is for additional starting scenarios, even these come free if you take advantage of their special release. And honestly, they're not really needed. You're getting such a good deal with this game already. Additional scenarios are just icing on the cake.

The game itself brings tremendous depth. Each individual officer in the game has their own set of skills. Some may be good at martial arms, others may delve into politics. Some officers may be good at everything, others nothing. The factions are divided in power between the castles and the stronger fortresses which protect their fiefs. Fiefs that can be improved by talented officers to produce more food, gold, and fighting men as time goes on. This will consist of most of your early game. You will want to build up your fiefs as quickly as possible. You won't be able to take over the land if you cannot bring an army to the field!

In addition to an army, the game introduces a new wrinkle in the form of tribes. There are many factions fighting over the land of Japan, but in addition to these there are several neutral 'tribes' that simply want to get along in a land divided by war. Each month, you can dedicate officers and a portion of gold each month to compete with other clans for the loyalty of this tribe! The higher their loyalty, the more they will do for you, such as providing gold and resources and helping you out in battle if you fight near their location. Eventually, if their loyalty reaches 100%, you can even get them to swear their complete loyalty to you and assemilate their tribe into one of your cities, giving them a significant boost to your population along with all the bonuses that it entails. Sometimes, the leader of the tribe will join you as an officer, giving you another asset to help improve your lands domestically and spread your influence abroad.

Diplomacy makes its return in two forms. Traditional and covert operations. On one hand, you can use diplomacy and give gifts of gold and unique items to other forces in order to secure good relations with them. Better relations secure longer alliances, measured in 6th months, 1 year, and 2 year, and even permanent agreements if you have a spare daughter for a marriage alliance. Others are more brief, such as requesting to borrow troops from an ally temporarily to give you that edge in a key battle. If you gather enough allies, you can even organize a large coalition with the combined objective to take down a faction that has grown too large to take on alone. But beware! Friends today may become enemies tomorrow. Treat your friends well so that they will always return the favor.

Covertly, you can send officers into enemy territory to try to convince an enemy officer to betray his lord. These operations sometimes take years to complete, but they are very much worth it, and can sometimes be the tide you need to turn a battle, sometimes even a war, permanently into your favor.

Wars take a while to get to, but once you do it is clear this is where the game has its focus on and where it shines the best. Everything you have done up until now comes into account. The number of your troops that arrive on the field, your allies and their proximity to the battle, the weapons and equipment your soldiers are equipped with, the amount of food you take with you, the tribes you have gained loyalty with and whether they are close to you or not, the location of the battle, the decisions you make during the battle and the deployment of your troops. Literally everything has a factor of whether you win or lose the battle and what you can do afterwards. Sometimes you will win a costly battle, but find yourself unable to follow up the victory because you have lost too many men and you cannot conduct an effective seige safely. Sometimes you have conducted bad diplomacy that has surrounded yourself with enemies who quickly jump on your now weakened clan, resulting in a game over! The wise lord who triumpths over his enemies conducts his operations cautiously, taking advantage of every opportunity he can get! As the Art of War dictates, he secures himself against the possibility of defeat and takes advantages of the opportunities his enemies present to him. If you do this, you will be successful.

Finally, the world itself is an active, rapidly changing world. Events that shake the land will strike at random, such as earthquakes or tsunamis. Eventually foreigners will come, bringing along their religions and advanced technologies. This introduces muskets to the game, which Nobunaga historically used to bring a large part of the continent under his control. If you can take advantage of this technology early, it can bring you a huge advantage. There are other events that can effect you as well, such as story events that can change the very fate of your clan, but I don't want to spoil too much. You'll have to find that stuff out for yourselves!

The game in general is for the patient, calm types who like to sit around and plot global domination. The depth this game provides and the strategies you can take to bring yourself both victory and defeat are endless. A single playthrough can take several hours for a single faction...and that's if you never make a single mistake or lose a battle...which you will. There are certain things out of your control and even the wisest general cannot see everything outside of his domain.

If you have the patience, the intellect, and the courage to dedicate yourself to a strategy game of epic proportions, this game is for you.

If you want a game that provides quick satisfaction for minimal effort, go play Call of Duty.

That is all.

Also you can marry officers to cute maidens to make them part of your family. Their children will later on become your own officers and even the heir to your clan if you're marrying off your sons. 10/10 would ship couples again.

After 217 hours playing this game, here are my thoughts: if you're really into the history of the Sengoku Jidai (Warring States period) of Japan, this is an excellent game. As a strategy game, however, it's just OK. While you can personally manage the civil development and battles, you can (and eventually have to) delegate these to the AI. The real challenge and fun comes from the historical quests you get playing as the major clans in the different scenarios, where you have to achieve various goals to emulate actual famous battles and other events within specific deadlines. Yes, you can play as some obscure clan and lead it to greatness, or even create your own clan, but then the game just becomes a strategy game, and in that respect, Shogun: Total War 2 is the superior game with the same setting but without the "historical simulation" element. Another issue is that this game is a port from Japan, and as such is a lot more expensive than similar games and has some minor translation issues that cause confusion.

In sum, if you're a hardcore Oda Nobunaga fan who wants to simulate Sengoku history, pony up the cash and get this game. If you're just looking for a fun, straightforward strategy game of trade, diplomacy and conquest, get the Shogun Total War games instead,

The game is awesome:

Custom Clan Campaign:
> Create your own diamyo, generals, ministers, officers for your custom clan. (1000 slots for edited characters)
> Develop your little town.
> Build roads, add facilities, upgrade your fortress or castle to boost your clan's popularity and population.
> Convince tribal chief to join you to earn their support both military and economy.
> Negotiate with neighboring clans to earn trade and alliance by friendship or marriage.
> Expand your territory by marching your troops with your allies' troops to destory the other clan, capture their provinces, execute his whole family or keep him as your servants.
> Establish a coalition with allies or other clans to fight against a much stronger clan.
> Destroy all the enemy and become the Shogun.
> Unify Japan and live happily ever after with your allied clan and vassals.
> Started from a mayor of a little town to become the supreme ruler of the whole nation. Isn't it incredible achievement?

Historical Campaign:
> Play as one of the famous warlords such as Oda Nobunaga, Uesugi Kenshin, Takeda Shingen,
Hojo Ujiyasu, Mori Motonari, or pick other minor and not famous lords.
> There are several senarios available for you to choose. Example: Year 1534, 1541, 1552, 1600.
> Each clan has their own storyline, cutscenes, main events, quests. It's up to you to follow the
historical storyline or defy it.
> Trigger each historical event by accomplishing each quest.
> Achieve the unification that those historical figures failed to accomplished.

Compare to Shogun 2:
> Battle system is not as good as Shogun 2.
> Better diplomacy system than Shogun 2.
> Have enormous number of generals, ministers, ninjas, tacticians than Shogun 2.
> Have only infantry, horse and matchlock not variety of unit types like Shogun 2.
> Each clan doesn't have any speciality like Shogun 2, but have special policy to enhance your clan management.
> Each clan's strength is based on its officers stats and special ability
Example: Tokugawa clan has Tadakatsu as its best fighter, Masanobu as its skilled
administrator and tactician, Hanzo as its expert ninja.
> Game end at year 1700.
> No mod

Early impression (7 hours at the time of writing)

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!

Ahh! so much I could write, but to save you reading a truly monumental wall of text, I'll say this:

If you:

Like Paradox grand Strategy: This could be fun for you, a little less fiddly, a little less in depth and Byzantine, but still plenty to do and the war management system is superbly good even without zooming in for the battles.

Like Total War: If you really only play for the tactical battles this may not be your cup of tea, it is undoubtedly a lot simpler and very strategy heavy by comparison. For people who like the strategy side of it or are balanced in their interest, this is well worth a look, go check out a lets play or two.

Sengoku Jidai\Japanese history fans: This stuff is catnip for me and I loved following the historic quests, learning new things about the events and personalities of the era and loved many of the realistic touches. Simply superb!

Graphics- not bad, pretty at times
Sound- great soundtrack and other ambient\Ui sounds
Strategy gameplay- Deep with lots do do and lots to think about
Tactical gameplay- Simple but fun diversion with good impact on play if you opt in to it
Performance- Ran flawlessly for me, minimal loading times
AI Performance: I really couldn't say. Easy is just that, I hear its competent on higher difficulties
Localisation- Pretty good though not without a few easily overlooked errors
Multiplayer-None, so don't buy it if you want that
Controls and UI- not too bad, takes a little getting used to and vassal management takes a while (might be missing something)

Overall: Great game I will be playing for a long time to come if my first impressions hold true- Ay Ay Ooooohhhhhh!/10

UPDATE: I added a short FAQ at the bottom of the review, it is a good tl;dr if you have a quick question.

If you have ever played any of the romance of the three kingdom games, or nobunagas ambition games you must get this game!

However chances are you haven't since those series dont have many titles localized in english.

This game is quite similar to Europa Universalis in my opinion, but with many different mechanics. The combat however is somewhat more like Total War then like Europa. And there is just so much to do in this game! I think both players who aren't new to hardcare strategy games like Europa and more casual players who play the odd Civilization, Total War, or Dynasty Warriors Empires games will very very much enjoy this game.

I haven't experienced any bugs yet which is nice because a lot of the other koei releases as of recent havent been great for pc. From what I have gathered this isn't a port since it was made on pc first which is also great.

The create/edit officer this time around is very very indepth! I am still working on my first officer an hour in and am not even halfway done!

Personally I love the theme of this game, it has very beautiful artwork and music. The historical theme is very epic and has some really cool back story to it too. You can play from a historical scenario, or play the fictional scenario and do things your way. A lot of fun options to play around with to really make it your own when you start a new game.

While not as indepth as europa, this game comes close but is 100x easier and more visually appealing. The combat is a lot more indepth then Civ 5 as is the diplomatic aspects of this game as well. The game is very easy to pickup once you get into things!

You get to command units of thousands of troops led by unique officers who all have their own cool ability and tactics that can be used to put interesting strategies into action. You can even search for hidden roads and stuff to help you plan battles ahead of time.

Between managing diplomacy with neighbouring clans, fighting a war with another clan, trying to entice an enemy officer into joining my clan, developing my states and teaching my officers new abilities I am having a lot of fun! This was a well spent $60, I would definately recommend this to all my friends.

PS - For those of you who are curious this does come with the Power Up Kit (if you don't know what this means, in simple terms it's just more customization options and such)

EDIT: I wanted to update my review a little to answer a few questions.
1. How is the performance?
From what I've read people are managing to run this on older system, I have a completely overkill computer so I'm not sure myself what the minimum requirements would be to run this game however I have yet to run into any sort of lag or buggyness, I expect this game to be well optimized since it was made for the pc first (so not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ port for once, thank you koei). PS I am on windows 10 64bit, i5 3570, 8gb ram and nvidia gtx 970

2. How is the combat system?
Ok so I've said it was totalwar like, but that was a bit vague right? So not everyone has played total war so I will try and explain without comparing to total war. So combat seemed rather straight foward at first, it was like the classic rotk system where you kinda just sent your platoon out and watched them mindlessly kill each other. However things like passive skills, active abilities (which sort of activate randomly and can easily change the tide of battles) and stats like INT, VAL and LEA play a important role to winning battles. There was one thing that bothered me, instead of being able to freely move units wherever on the map, they are tied down to board game like routes called roads (roadwork can be done to improve travel speed). I was wondering why the combat felt like it was built on bogged down rotk mechanics. Then I saw this little button that would pop up over an units when they are enganged in battle, clicking it takes you into a war map with all currently engaged units that is more akin to the combat system of previous nobunaga's ambition games. This is where you can freely control your units, choose when to use your officer abilitys, use terrain advantage (barricades, turrets, etc) or even choose to seige the base (if nearby one) instead of enganging in direct combat. In this mode I have both completely wiped without dealing any casualties to the enemy officer, and have won impossible (etc 7000 vs my 3000) battles with the use of strategy. There are a lot of cool abilities and you can choose to engange in melee or ranged combat here. Horses can be used to charge the enemy with great speed and a high chance to confuse them, muskets can be unloaded which can also confuse the enemy, and you can use any of you adjucant officer abilities as well (depending on how much "control" you have over your unit).

3. How agressive is the ai?
There is a agressiveness setting you can change before starting your game, I have it set to high, so when I send units out the neigbouring states immediately send units to my border and draw close when I send them out to fight. Some times it is a bit frustrating, because often after taking a fort or so, it is immediately attacked by another clan, while I was still new to the game I lost many newly captured forts like this. It was quite annoying, this lead to me to start planning more intricate strategies involving split attacks, attempts to form alliances etc. What bugs me though is how handicapped you are if you decided to play the game starting with only 1 fort, you dont have enough labor to make any facilities and you are lacking in nearly everything, it's too expensive to endeavour in any kind of diplomacy. So here i found my self resorting to underhanded tactics (waiting for others to war, etc), and submitting myself to another clan (with this I get an ally and foreign income).

I hope I've cleared up most of the questions here, if any of you have other questions feel free to ask, I will try and update my review with answers to your question!

Many have compared this strategy game with Shogun 2 : Total War, but the battles in this are nowhere near as in-depth. The premise is the same - take control of a Japanese clan during the Sengoku Jidai period and conquer the land, but Nobunaga focuses more on your human resources, namely your officers. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, and also their own agendas, so you'll have to decide how best to deploy them - they'll be responsible for conducting diplomacy, governing cities, overseeing construction and of course leading your troops.

I like this a lot, though it's definitely not worth the asking price. Do what I did and wait until the next Steam sale.

This is a really good strategy game. There are many aspects to the game. It runs in monthly turns. Military orders may be given during the turn, as the month passes by. Deploying and moving troops is possible. Of course, during the Council phase which occurs in between turns, military deployments and movement orders may also be given.

The economy aspect of the game is pretty neat. You can do all sorts of economic things. These include increasing your economy (agriculture for provisions, crafts for gold, and conscripts for troop increases), construct special buildings in city districts, change city district types (food, cash, troops), build new districts once city population increases, improve defenses, increase road size (impacts troop movements and city populations). There are a few more things as well, such as building a new Fortress (small city).

Diplomacy is cool. You can improve your rating with another clan, persuade minor Tribes to your side (they give troops in battle or special income or you can even have them join a nearby city, increasing that city's population), give gifts to Clans (makes them friendly for a few months) or Officers (officers improve their loyalty), place a Lord at a castle/fortress, or even marry people to gain loyalty or alliances. If anoth Clan is at 40+ diplomacy you can request troops from them. Neat.

Military battles play out on the strategic map. Optionally if there are enough troops engaged you can control the troops directly, similar to the Totwl War series. Personally I use the strategic battles as I prefer them. When you surround a castle/fortress you need as many troops as that location's defense has in order to lay siege and capture.

A Castle has a larger town than a Fortress fyi.

There are a few more things you can do, such as hire ronin as leaders. This game has many things to do.

Anyway, this is a pretty neat wargame. Good game.

This is good. Real good. If you're a fan of Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms series then you're going to like this. Even then, based on the 4x and real time battle mechanics, if you're a Total War fan, you may enjoy this as well.

Essentially, you choose one of several scenarios and choose one of hundreds of different playable characters (not counting the ones you can create yourself) and attempt to unite Japan during the Sengoku Jidai period. Yes, yes, I know, isn't the Warring States starting to get a bit old? Well, this is actually a very refreshing take on it because it's a story driven experience where you receive Historical quests that creates an interesting world in Feudal Japan (as Koei is apt to do). You develop your nation, starting with just a city, using your officers and as you grow economically, you build up militarily. You attack neighbors, convert their officers and make alliances where needed to ensure victory and further grow the amoeba that is your clan. On top of this, the atmosphere of the game is absolutely beautiful, with thriving immersive cities that actually grow visually as you develop them. You just built Stone Walls? Well you actually see Stone Walls on your Castle now. I will say, the UI can be a little troublesome at times but if you take your time and play the tutorial, you should be able to pick it up rather quickly. There are also a metric tonne worth of actions you can take as compared to ROTK games. As a fan of Koei's Strategy games, I was pleasantly surprised to see this and I'm glad to say I have not been disappointed. Highly recommended!

Update: 3 hours in, no crashes, very good optimization as far as I can tell. AI can be ruthless. Take your time building up. Updates will continue as I notice things.

Gameplay Impressions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plw30yI376I

I often do not write reviews but this game is amazing, if not one of the best games I have bought on steam in terms of Grand Strategy.

First if you love Japanese History or wish to learn more about it then this is a great game for such (In terms of events and facts the game provides). Second if you want to have a long save that is enjoyable throughout then I recommend this (I'd suggest starting as a clan such as the Hojo, Amago or Ouchi for starters as they are the strongest).

I've done two playthroughs. One as the Satomi (a small clan which often is crushed when used by the AI) and the Takeda (a hard starting clan because there are two stronger clans South of your land).

With the Satomi game it came to a standstill because I had all of the east and required a mere ten more castles plus Kyoto to become Shogun. Where Nobunaga Oda held most of the West par Shimazu land. With only us three factions and none able to break the other it didnt seem anyone was getting anywhere.

My new save I took over Japan fully. Even though I became Shogun and could enact a ''No More War'' Policy which would win the game for me anyway. I thought to myself ''Largest army... Best Generals.... Still got my orginal ruler...'' and continued to conquer until Japan was united.

The main thing is in this game is to make sure Oda Clan does not expand. If they do and Nobunaga takes over then you will struggle and end up like my Satomi as he becames all too powerful.

Good things:
Ending is amazing
Game overall is easy to grasp after 5 hours
Tons of clans to play, so if you finish one you can pick another
Good for learning
Nobunaga is a monster to face in battle

Bad things:
Religion has next to no affact in this game which is a huge dissapointment for me
No Ikko Ikki (as far as I have noticed)
Your not able to check your rulers age
Would be nice for a family tree. So I can see who is in my family (Not all sons have the last name as ruler making it slightly harder)

Overall I rate this game 98/100. Only issues is no family tree which would of been somewhat good and useful and lack of religion affacting clans.
To those who buy this game have fun ! I know I will continue to do so.

Quick review followed by a story

Have you ever played Total War: Shogun 2 and thought "wow this game would be great if the A.I. wasn't horrible" or "Would be good if this game was challenging without just being A.I. army/agent/Retarted diplomacy SPAM"?

Well Nobunaga's Ambition has you covered, focusing mainly on the Map-based this time with polished gameplay (I hate using this word) and A.I. that makes sense. It also gives much more information about the time, giving you visual novel style information about different clans, people and historical events which is an unexpected joy, making the country feel more alive.

There is still fights between clans, these are not as good as aformentioned Shogun 2, but you cannot just abuse the AI and win when it is 10 to 1. In this game it is much more simplified, but difficult (watch let's play vids for a good look before buying), every loss will affect you, every win will make the game hard later on as other clans start fearing/admiring you.

TLDR
Want an great strategy game that focuses on the Sengoku Jidai where there is plenty of detail and a game to waste plenty of hours, try out this.

Story time
After downloading the game, I started out the game playing the 'tutorial' scenario where I lost the first battle and was booted back to the Main Menu. Annoyed at this, I started the second scenario, focusing on the events of Nobunaga's father, Oda Nobuhide, Stating off in my small province of Owari, I started playing with the features, slowly building my towns and my armies. After 1 hour of messing around, I started to attack a single clan, winnning a province and stroking my ego. Choosing to follow historical missions of the time for the daimyo, I eventually came to fight the Imagawa and the Saito. After securing allies, I attacked with my petty force of around 3000 with my allies force of over 10,000, I defeated the Saito, caputing the daimyo and coverting him to my side (a real prize).

After defeating him, I made my way south, attacking the next enemy, over the next 5 hours, I took that clan down to one base (not with frustration or Save Scumming, but with fun). Once they were no longer a threat, I started to regroup and attack the nearby TAKEDA clan because every time I play a game about this era, I always attack them. Well turns out that was a stupid idea, continually being defeated by their strategy and my poor logistic handling. When I finally got a truce, I had only taken 1 province and it was continually being attack from a northern enemy clan, trying to take it without success.

Leaving 10,000 troops there, I pulled back and began focusing on the last Imagawa base I had ignored, putting together another 10,000 to try and take it. There was a catch however, on the other side of the Imagawa were the powerful Hojo clan besieging them, so I smashed their army in the side, taking the castle without loss. HORRIBLE CHOICE IN FORESIGHT. For the next hour or so was mainly diplomacy and building, making the Takeda neutral and I could ask them to lead a hand if needed. Then THIS HAPPENED, Oda Nobunaga appeared as an officer and straight away informed me that 40,000 Hojo troops are comming my way. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, 40k? I have 10k left at home and 10k at the north, how can I do this? The enemies came thundering across their land, besiging my castle that I had taken, smashing my armies and forcing me to ally with an enemy clan of the hojo and requesting the Takeda (who were close) to give me a hand.

THIS is where the game started to shine for me. Losing battles against them, I realised something, I still had 10k forces north to use and they were close to the hojo, but on the other side of the clan, So I had an awesome idea. I got those 10k soldiers to storm into their land, besiging 3 castles at once. The enemy AI came to realise what was happening and pulled some of the forces back to defend when suddenly the Takeda forces showed up at two sides, blocking the force of about 35k.

With MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF TROOPS IN ONE SPOT, the game stopped and told me of the 'MASS BATTLE' mode. "What is this?" I replied before clicking this. Entering a battle with 40k soldiers, equally matched I had a battle with the enemy. Eventually winning, the Hojo were in retreat, the 'spine was broken'. Seeing this other neutral clans started attacking the hojo, becomming a land grab.
That is where I am up to after playing 20 hours. Still have the of Japan to go. ^_^