Nobunaga's Ambition


Nobunaga's Ambition is a series of turn-based grand strategy role-playing simulation video games. The original game was one of the first in its genre, being released in March 1983 by the Japanese video game developer Koei. Nobunaga's Ambition takes place during the Sengoku period of feudal Japan. The player is tasked with achieving the ultimate goal of warlord Oda Nobunaga: the conquest and unification of Japan. Selecting Oda Nobunaga is optional, however, as the player is also able to choose from a variety of other regional daimyōs of the time.
Games in the franchise have been released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Sega Genesis, 3DO, Super Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. The title was also released for Macintosh as well as MSX, Amiga, and MS-DOS. As of March 2018, the series has shipped more than 10 million copies worldwide.

Gameplay

The player may choose from four campaign scenarios, including "Battle for the East", "Daimyo Power Struggles", "Ambition Untamed", and "Road Towards Unification". In each scenario, the player must allocate resources to raise a capable military force, provide a productive economy to support both military and civilian expansion, and support the peasants in order to sustain their respect and loyalty. Gameplay is taken in turns, with each turn in the map view corresponding to a season, and each turn during battle corresponding to a day. The player may achieve victory through numerous means, among which are forcing the enemy to retreat, destroying the enemy command unit, outlasting an invading force, or prolonging battle until the opposing force has exhausted its supplies.
The player can make many choices during the campaign. According to Evan Brooks of Computer Gaming World: "One may transfer soldiers between fiefs, go to war, increase taxes, transfer rice or gold to another fief, raise the level of flood control, make a non-aggression pact or arrange a marriage, cultivate, use a merchant, recruit for the military, train the army, spy on a rival, expand a town, give food/rice to peasants/soldiers, steal peasants from rival daimyos, allocate military strength, recuperate, turn over a controlled fief to the computer for administration, or pass a turn."

Games

;Game Boy
;WonderSwan
;Game Boy Color
;Game Boy Advance
;Nintendo DS
Sony PlayStation Vita
These were released in Asia, with physically copies for both versions with and without power up kit, on top of the Japanese versions released.
;Nintendo 3DS
The Nobunaga's Ambition series has garnered several awards over the years. According to Koei's website, various releases in the series have won Log-In magazine's "BHS Prize", the "Minister of Post & Telecommunications Prize", Nikkei BP's 12th, 13th, and 14th annual "Best PC Software" awards, and CD-ROM Fan's "Fan of the Year 2001 Grand Prize".
In North America, where it was released five years after its Japanese release, critical reception was also positive. The game was positively reviewed by Computer Gaming World, where reviewer Evan Brooks gave it four stars out of five. He introduced the game as "a detailed economic / diplomatic / political / military simulation of the unification of Japan in the Sixteenth Century." He praised the graphics for being "among the best that this reviewer has ever seen for the IBM" and the 5x10 hex map battles, and noted that it used role-playing game elements, including assigning various statistics to a selected persona, a time system where each turn represents a year, as the daimyo ages and eventually dies of old age, and a multiplayer option. He stated that he "thoroughly enjoyed Nobunaga's Ambition", concluded with a "Highly Recommended" rating, Compute! similarly praised the IBM PC version, calling it "one of the best strategic war games ever designed for a personal computer" and citing the game play, user interface, and documentation.
The console versions had a more lukewarm reception. Reviewing the SNES version, GamePro praised the control interface and combat system but opined that the game essentially offers nothing to set it apart from Koei's previous historical simulators. The magazine rated the Genesis version similarly, saying that "Like all Koei games, Nobunaga has an easy-to-use but detailed menu-driven interface that activates a load of complex commands."
In 1996, Next Generation listed the series collectively as number 34 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Lead designer Shou Kibasawa is a tactical genius who realizes that domestic and military strategies are interconnected, and that fielding armies can only be accomplished after building an infrastructure to support them. As a result, Nobunaga's Ambition boasts a level of strategic complexity few other series can come close to matching."