Nobunaga's Ambition 2 is the Koei update to its older game, Nobunaga's Ambition. The setting is feudal Japan of the 16th Century, a period when ruthless warlords - daimyos - contended with each other for dominance. Ultimately, the winner in this struggle became Shogun, and held actual power in the islands, while being nominally subject to the Emperor.The game casts you as one of those daimyos and permits you to determine if you are the one who will shape the map by wresting control into your own hands. There are two scenarios. The first begins in 1560 AD as the most famous, or infamous, daimyos began to attract notice. There are 28 of them included in the scenario. The second scenario follows the rise of Nobunaga Kitsuboshi in 1582 to power and allows you to play either as Nobunaga or as one of his chief allies or rivals. Your objective is to unify Japan under your rule in either case. If you fail through death on the battlefield, at the hands of a ninja, or through natural causes, you can choose a successor and play on.Functionally, your first job is to prosper the lands under your control through good agricultural management practices. Good luck will also help, since disasters will occur from time to time.Next, you will want to create armies of loyal and skillful warriors to boost your claim to ultimate power. Here, Nobunaga's Ambition 2 improves on its predecessor by including some 400 historical samurai in the game, providing you with generals for your troops and governors for your conquered provinces. Each samurai is characterized by statistics you can learn, such as his War Ability, Charisma, and Loyalty. Some of these characteristics you may improve through training or rewards. Other characteristics are hidden from you, such as compatibility with other samurai, leading to them taking actions consistent with their particular makeup but which are sometimes surprising to you.Your samurai can lead your troops, which must be recruited, trained, and equipped for battle. The economy you created in your provinces provides you with the income to prepare your army.Nobunaga's Ambition 2 is a turn-based game, with each turn representing one month. Some actions, like Harvest, take place in a particular month, while others, like invading your neighbor, follows your timetable.The game uses an initiative system to determine what actions can be completed in a particular month. Each daimyo and samurai has a stock of "Body Points" that represent the attention he can afford to spend on an action. Each action has a cost in Body Points for the character executing it, and if he does not have the points necessary, he may not perform it. Body Points are refreshed a little each month. Intensive operations will deplete Body Points and then require turns of inaction to stock up again, so timing actions to coincide with Body Point availability is an extra wrinkle to the management of resources.The attack of an army results in a tactical playout of the resulting battle or siege. A hex-based map of the area of the battlefield will form the playing board for the movement to combat and actual fighting. Fortifications (castles) have a dramatic benefit for the defender, as you would expect. An attack may result in an outclassed samurai withdrawing his soldiers inside the walls to await storming of the gates or to sit out a siege. If he doesn't like his chances inside his castle, he may attempt to withdraw to a neighboring, friendly province.Gameplay has all the benfits and liabilities of turn-based games. You have no time limit to consider your actions, so it is a thinking player's game. On the other hand, it doesn't have the immediacy and confusion of a real-time strategy title. The "fog of war" still exists, however, as the political landscape changes about you. Daimyos and samurais act out their own agendas, often presenting you with surprises. Each game year, all the characters age a year, and in a protracted game, advancing age will cause older samurai to die and youths to come of age.The more recent title, Shogun - Total War, shows an obvious relation to this game. Given the graphical limits imposed in 1989, Nobunaga's Ambition 2 necessarily suffers by comparison in grandeur, but it contains a depth in the political game which is not matched by Shogun.