Sneaky Release of Nobunaga's Ambition

[Gusington]

Truly shamefrur.

[BanzaiCat]

[tgb]

Reading is hard.

Hertfordshire, 18th May 2015- KOEI TECMO Europe is proud to announce inaugural release of famed strategy/ historical simulation IP Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence. The game will be available on the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system across Europe on 4th September 2015. It will also be simultaneously available digitally on the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and on PC via Steam®.

[Cyrano]

No, as Barbie taught us, MATH is hard.

Reading is fundamental...

[tgb]

Perhaps, but apparently no one else bothered to actually read the linked article before getting so pissed off about something obviously incorrect.

[Cyrano]

Nihil obstat.

Just a line that caught me at lunch...as I say, I'm out until this heads a bit further West anyway...

[W8taminute]

necro-revival...

"Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence lands in English in September, and will be exclusive to Sony platforms (PlayStation 3 and 4) on console, and Steam."

http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2015/05/nobunagas-ambition-is-finally-coming.html

Oh great.  This is the game I've played but the Japanese version.  If I'd have known they'd do it in English I would have waited.  I take that back, I still would have bought the Japanese language version anyway because I'm an import gamer and semi big J-fan.   ;D

[jomni]

Cool!

[JasonPratt]

I for one welcome the new Shogun. 

[jomni]

Release is close.  Here's the English site. 
http://www.nobunagasambition.eu/

Currently playing the Chinese version and I'm very impressed.  The change to (semi) real-time is great.  The tactical battles though simple are also interesting.  Definitely re-buying this.

[tgb]

I'm very interested, but what do you mean by semi-real-time?

[jomni]

I'm very interested, but what do you mean by semi-real-time?

You give orders every month to develop your provinces and infrastructure (domestic affairs).  Then press play to resolve the month in real time.  You can still freely pause and redirect military units during the month's real time resolution (military affairs).  It flows faster than any turn-based Koei game.

I love how diplomacy works in this game.  You can send envoys to increase relationship points faster than normal pace.  Alliances and marriages, increase the relationship points accrual as well even without envoys.  You need to spend diplomatic points for diplomatic (set up marriages, alliances, vassalize) and military actions (i.e. ask for reinforcements).  Once spent, you need to accumulate the relationship points again.  This means you need to be careful when you spend these points. Similar to Paradox games but timing is much more crucial as most diplomatic actions will wipe out the points pool.  Basically an alliance does not mean he will send troops to your aid when you already asked for some other favour from them. 

Tactical battles are interesting but still simple.  You do not need to play it out if you want as it will resolve itself in real-time as mentioned above. 
Battles are fought in a confined space with no room for flanking (because flanking is done in the strategic map).  You give orders to move forward, hold, move back.  Action points accrue slowly.  You spend special action points to change formation to wedge (bonus for cavalry charge), open (bonus for missile fire), normal (bonus for movement).  You spend action points to order a cavalry sortie or a musket volley attack.    At the heart of the battle are the generals and their skills.  Some generals are good, some are bad, some are super powerful.  The different perks cost different levels of action points and have different effects (increase recharge rate of action points, increase attack, increase defense, confuse, prevent enemy from moving forward or back, etc.).  The key is to perform good combos of orders and actions.  So one must actually be mindful of the generals that they send to battle and who they are up against.   By the way, the graphics of tactical battles are not good.  It looks nice and modern, but looking closer, it looks like a previous-gen console (PS3) port.  Not Total War quality.  But it's no big deal since the real meat of the game is the strategic and operational aspect.

[tgb]

Anyone else see that release date of 4/9/15 and think "Hey.  Isn't April over?"?

[jomni]

Anyone else see that release date of 4/9/15 and think "Hey.  Isn't April over?"?

Lol!

[spelk]

Preview
http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2015/08/preview-nobunagas-ambition-sphere-of.html