Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening – Complete Edition Review – A Hopeless Battle

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening – Complete Edition Review

I’m used to a certain level of density when it comes to strategy games. You know, a nested series of systems that gradually get more complex? The usual method? Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening doesn’t quite follow this same formula. Instead, the game starts out incredibly complicated and gets even more so, somehow. While I don’t mind a bit of complex strategizing, this is leagues beyond such meager ideas. I recognize that Awakening is pretty well put together, yes. But even so, this might be the most ‘not for me’ a game has ever been in my life.

First off, let’s reiterate – this is a real layer cake of incredible logistic detail. You’ve got so many historical figures to learn about! If I were a student of Japanese history, I’d be thrilled. I can’t imagine a better way to learn about this particular period. Plus, the whole game is a feature-complete look at the rigors of ruling over contested territory.

So Much To Do

Combat, trade, and diplomacy are all handled through a series of nested menus. These same menus give you access to tons of complex systems designed to reproduce the immense complexity involved in running a kingdom during this war-torn era. You can order covert actions, kick off invasions, improve your castles, and beg for help from your neighbors. The settings are nuanced and expansive. You’ve got a ton of tiny details to fiddle with. If you want to get granular, you can absolutely do that. I just can’t engage with systems like this on a primal, lizard brain level.

I got so, so bored in record time. That wall of text and menus came rolling my way, and I shriveled up like a corn dog in a bonfire. You spend so much time patiently waiting for progress bars to vanish, bars that take the place of actual in-game events. Every activity I listed is represented by a tiny bar in the corner winding down. I found myself skipping through important dialogue and text prompts in pretty short order. There were more bars to burn through, after all. Literal years went by before anything cool happened, I thought I was going to die.

Just Menus All The Way Down

That’s not true. After a couple of hours, I managed to take over some territory. This was immediately followed up by my castle being invaded and my army being destroyed. So things are happening from time to time. Awakening isn’t unfairly difficult or anything. There’s just an imposing learning curve you have to climb over before you can start making any real progress. If you can absorb the long lessons in the tutorial pages, there’s a chance you can actually start winning these campaigns. Just make sure you’re using the mouse controls when you do so.

Mouse controls are non-negotiable, they’re an absolute must. I cannot conceive of playing this game with a regular controller, the inputs are so convoluted when approached that way. With the mouse, you just point and click. It’s downright intuitive. Navigation with the controller requires multi-button inputs just to access one of the most common menus in the game. I can’t overstate what a game-changer the mouse system is.

Mouse Controls Are A Must

While I recognize that this very specific subgenre is aggressively not for me, I also feel like Awakening is not an effective teacher re: itself. You would need a comprehensive guide to really dig into this game properly. The walls of text do not lend themselves to easy understanding. There’s a lot of material in-game that tries to teach you, but it’s all too dense in its own right.

I’m trying to examine Awakening through a more objective lens. I know that a real Nobunaga head would see this game very differently. But it’s just so punishingly dull. The density of material, the pacing, the interface, all of this smashed against my limited attention span with incredible force. If you’re a fan of the series, Nobunaga’s Ambition Awakening Complete Edition will be a worthy addition to your Nintendo Switch 2 collection. Otherwise, I can’t recommend this game.

***A Nintendo Switch 2 code was provided by the publisher***