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Sunday, May 31, 2015

Nobunaga's Ambition: Creation


Here is an interesting game that I've been playing for awhile lately. In fact, I downloaded it way back (2014) but wasn't able to get into it straightaway. It's one of those strategy war games in which you have to spend absolutely ages to build up your own city before you start conquering neighbouring territories; the whole process, needless to day, can be v v v time consuming. Anyway, I got my hands on a Chinese edition (previously played something called the Romance of the Three Kingdoms 12, and though I kinda got the gist of the gameplay I never advanced much with the game since it is all in Japanese) and it still took me some time just to understand the basic gameplay (even with a tutorial). But after having put it down a few months, I decided to make another crack at it and it has been quite a rewarding experience.

To begin with, there are just many, many ways to play this game. You can just pick and choose a particular (seminal) battle and play either as Nobunaga or one of his allies/enemies. I decided to go for the "canon" historical account first. So before progressing I'd need to meet certain conditions first, which can be challenging. For instance, if you fail to conquer a city by a certain year, then it's, like, game over. Well, you just cannot proceed with the (real) story. I've done pretty well and am about to conquer the northwest territories. And because I'm totally anal, I've stashed up lots of cash in the treasury, as well as food for my forever expanding armies, and horses and weapons. There is so much micro management going on, which I kinda enjoy. Which is weird. Cos in real life I totally don't micro manage but I love that in my games. But I think I've built up such an empire now that unifying Japan is probably just a few more gameplay hours away. I might just pause here. 

Then I am really running out of games to play. All those Hyperdimension titles, pretty that they look, lack substance (hmm, I think that's the whole point of the series). I LOVE Super Robot Wars but it's in Japanese so I'm going to be stuck with the game soon cos of language barrier. Actually, finding a online walkthrough might help. Will have to wait until autumn before the English version of Persona 4 Dancing All Night is released.