bill@dmntor.UUCP (Bill Kyle) (02/28/91)
Here is my review of Nobunaga's Ambition. It was purchased by myself 2 weeks ago and has been played about 30 hours, so far. The game requires 1meg RAM, and was played on an expanded A500 with 2 drives and NO HD. The game is advertised as HD installable and off-disk copy protected. However when I attempted to back-up both game disks I was unable to back-up disk II. I called Koei customer support and was told somewhat rudely, that "ummm I think you have a copy protected disk II" OK so I'll hope disk II doesn't crap-out on me. As it turned out, while disk II was copy-protected there is no other form of protection. Further-more the HD install instructions that I noticed are clear and concise...its time for me to get an HD. OK, the game itself is very good. The concept is one of acquiring control of all of feudal Japan. You start the game with one "fief" and through military conquest, subversion, and diplomacy you attempt to expand your territory. Up to 8 or 10 human players may play, the others are computer controlled. You allocate your resources to various catagories in an attempt to strengthen your fief and recruit armies or ninja's. People who like Risk, Diplomacy or some of the various "political/economic" oriented games will like Nobunaga. Very serious Wargamers may find the tactical combat somewhat watered-down. However those same Wargamers will enjoy the logistcal challanges to planing your campaigns. This is not an easy game. On the computers "dumbest" level I still only win 50% of the time. Average game length, after one is used to the comands, is about 2-3 hours, unless you get killed. The game is very well designed in regards to userfriendliness. One particularly nice option allows you to turn-off some of the gimick animation that tends to grind disk II (the same one that you can't back up) after that disk access is very minimal. The manual and historical notes are very good. Indeed I have not seen such good historical notes on the games theme since UMS (Ultimate Military Simulator). There is one slight bug in the mouse-control of your units on the tactical battle screen. This doesn't impede play that much, however one longs for SSI's execution of this aspect of the game. To sum, Nobunaga is a very good game for those who like Strategic Wargames. It appears to be HD installable, though I could not confirm that. The game flows very well given such detail at the strategic level. It cost me about $45 dollars and I am satisfied with the purchase so far.
tinny@madnix.UUCP (Philip Varner) (03/03/91)
I bought Nobunaga's Ambition and have been playing it off of backups, I found no problem in coping them at all. Its an awesome game.
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