If you’ve ever played a Warriors game and wondered, “Man, what’s the real story behind all this cartoonish murder? How in the world can these armies afford this nonsense?” Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence just might be the game for you. An old-school strategy joint through and through, Sphere of Influence will challenge your attention to detail, strategic prowess and patience threshold.

To its credit, Sphere of Influence tries to streamline as much as it can without betraying its hardcore roots. Players can simply pick any scenario right off the bat, treating the experience more like an intricate tabletop game than a more linear, progression-oriented video game like its zanier siblings. The menus and options are pretty bare bones too, with respect to play options. You can tweak plenty of options of course, but you won’t find a bunch of goofy offshoots like in every other Warriors game.

If you're into this thing you probably know what you're in for. Even when you're fast forwarding time to the fullest extent of the law, Sphere of Influence crawls. Again, patience. Play progresses incrementally, and even the tiniest of upgrades needs a full cycle until the next “War Council” to finish. This sense of speed or lack thereof has a fascinating sense of pros and cons to me as a genre outsider.

On one hand, yeah, you can’t rush through things and blast forward like a lot of other strategy games. On the other, the early game feels pretty intense. Resources are supertight, and each stretch of time feels like a battle against the world around you as you struggle to boost as much as you can without losing sustainability or security.

Most of Sphere of Influence is spent clicking through tons of menu options. You have a huge bar on the left side of the screen, and most of the interaction with the world you’re doing is merely clicking on what section of the map you want to operate on. It’s not very exciting, nor do the visuals amount to much. The PS4 offers stability and speed, but there’s no real need or desire for flash here. That’s fine though, since this is a strategy game after all. But when it comes to combat, I feel like a lot could have been done to make it more interesting.

In combat, the player is actually taken into a pocket dimension like an RPG, and the controls and interactions become even more involved and active. You direct units and need to be ready to change course or activate skills at a moment’s notice as being flanked and overwhelmed is a very real danger, but one that can be manually avoided. It’s a nice touch. Unfortunately, all it really amounts to is some Tetris block-looking gimmicks bumbling around a void until one of them dies. It’s interesting and adds an extra dimension (literally!) to the game, but it comes off as a bit awkward thanks to the super-low production value.

That said, combat is only a piece of this pie, and the pie is enormous. The scale of Sphere of Influence is ridiculous, having the player essentially conquering all of Japan and interacting with an overwhelming amount of minutia. Players can opt for diplomacy, conspiracy, agriculture, so on and so forth. Omega Force basically wants Sphere of Influence to feel like running a whole kingdom, and it went a long way to make sure no stone is left unturned. If the massive barrier of entry doesn't keep you away, you're going to get swept into a world you won'tbe able to leave easily, lest you ruin everything for the Oda clan.

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence is not an approachable title. Even fans of stuff like StarCraft might end up scratching their heads or cowering in fear at first glance. Warriors fans will certainly have no clue what to do when booting this mountain of the game up for the first time. This is a game for people who revel in strategy, who can sit and play a game of Risk for hours and hours and hours and… yeah. If that’s your niche, you literally cannot get a game that fits the bill better, unless you have plenty of non-digital table space.

Hint: For the sake of your sanity and and the safety of your controllers, play the tutorial. Play it twice, even. Pay attention. Good luck.

by Lucas White