I got my first Game Boy in 1991, along with two games: some kind of Metroid-like thing where you're a gargoyle, and Nobunaga's Ambition. The gargoyle thing kept my interest for a while, but it was Nobunaga's Ambition that really grabbed me. I was already into strategy games on my Apple II, but here was a detailed strategy game that I could carry around and play anywhere (so long as the light was bright enough to see the screen).

However, being a Game Boy game, it had a teensy manual. A Nobunaga's Ambition with a teensy manual is a terrible thing. I couldn't figure out things like how much food I would harvest each season, and how much of it my soldiers would eat. I was marching armies to death by starving them.

Calling Koei

Smells like Mikawa Spirit.

So I eventually called Koei's customer support. This was back in 1991, so I easily got an actual person on the phone. She was there for technical questions, and she had no idea what the economic model was in the Game Boy version of Nobunaga's Ambition. In fact, she knew almost nothing about how the game worked, beyond putting the cartridge in the Game Boy and maybe blowing on the contacts if it wasn't working. She patiently tried to explain this to me as I read off my list of questions about harvests, castle upgrades, income rates and so on. The poor woman was at a loss. I demanded to speak to someone who could help me. I had to at least know how food and armies worked. How was I going to unite Japan without even the most rudimentary quatermastering abilities?

Eventually, she agreed to send me the manual to a version of Nobunaga's Ambition for another platform. It helped a little. Nobunaga's Ambition has never been an easy endeavor, no matter what the platform. Whether it's the documentation, the learning curve, the interface,or just the Asian names, most of Koei's games require a lot of patience and dedication. Eighteen years later, as I wrestle with Nobunaga's Ambition: Iron Triangle, I realize that I've come a long way. Koei has not.

Officer's mess

SimCity, the Feudal Japan edition

Koei's longest-running and most famous series are Romance of the Three Kingdoms, set in China, and Nobunaga's Ambition, set in Japan. Recently, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games have gone a little RPG. Nobunaga's Ambition is doing no such thing. This is very much a hardcore strategy game. The "iron triangle" of the subtitle is a reference to the interplay among technology, government and the military, which is a good way to characterize the level of gameplay. You work your way along a tech tree, you build up your provinces, and then you have occasional battles.

The main playing pieces are officers, whose stats determine their most effective use: They have aptitude to determine what techs they can help you learn, politics to determine how quickly they can do projects like civil construction, intelligence to determine their effectiveness at subterfuge, and leadership for all things military. They have qualities like valor and will, for use in battles. They have inventories, loyalty and lifespans. Any task requires an assigned officer, and some require multiple officers. When it comes time to do battle, every unit can be led by up to three officers, which will determine whether the unit gets any special abilities.

Japan is divided into provinces, with castles, fortresses and ports being the effective capital for each area. But that's just the start. Provinces have to be meticulously built up with districts that can hold various structures. It's a bit like zoning in a SimCity game, and it could be a game in its own right. Farms produce food regularly, while rice paddies are a larger food dump once a year, although more vulnerable to drought. Shops make you gold, but trading posts let you buy stuff with the gold. The number of barracks, blacksmiths and ranches determine how many soldiers, muskets and horses you'll be able to accumulate. You'll need various kinds of academies throughout your kingdom to work your way up the tech tree.

Cry banzai and let slip the dogs of war

This guy seems ambitious.

And when you've built up a bit, it's time to go to battle. This is basically a game about swallowing neighboring provinces until you've taken all of Japan. The battles work according to a nifty little system of different unit types with different functions, including a few different types of siege engines. Armies are normally parked and waiting in castles, but at the cost of food, you can send them scurrying around Japan to attack other castles and armies. There are enough unit types to keep things interesting, and as armies fight, they accumulate will, which you can spend by firing off the special powers of the officers commanding the army. Each type of army has a special ability. Bows, for instance, can try to wound officers, whereas cavalry can shut down the special attacks of infantry. Muskets and dragoons come along later in the game to kick ass and take names.

The game runs in real-time, although you can pause and give orders or study the map whenever you like. Time runs in days, with each year divided into four seasons. You can play the huge main scenario or smaller scenarios that let you pick a date and an area, or you can work your way through a series of unlockable challenges, each with a single goal. The artificial intelligence is good enough, but like many games this complex, it's not your main opponent. You're mostly just trying to work your way through the system.

The wrong platform

And that's the basic description. If it sounds a bit complicated, keep in mind that I've only told you about maybe a tenth of the gameplay. There's much more detail at work here. To Koei's credit, Iron Triangle ships with a great manual. It's thorough, accessible and full of charts for units, technologies and buildings. This is a deep and complex strategy game every bit as ambitious, epic, and in-depth as Europa Universalis.

Send your officers to a barn-raising!

And here's the catch: It simply doesn't work on the PlayStation 2. Iron Triangle would have fared better on a PC, where you could navigate the interface with a mouse and hotkeys. As it is, the PlayStation 2 controller is a clunky compromise. There's a lot of shuffling back and forth to check through different menus for what you need. Then there are the interminable lists stretching off-screen in multiple directions, with no way to crosslink information. This is a game that can't be played from any one place, much less any three or four places. Nobunaga's Ambition: Iron Triangle is spread across multiple panels, screens and lists, all scattered far from each other. That's a lot of going to and fro for the PlayStation 2 controller.

The higher resolution on a PC would have also made life easier. Visually, this game is a soupy nightmare. It's hard to get an overview of the map, or to make out what districts you've got, or to see where armies are in relation to each other. Trying to sort out armies during a crowded battle is almost impossible, but it's a crucial part of playing since timing for each army's special abilities is crucial. And if you're used to seeing text in high-definition, going back to tiny fonts on the PlayStation 2's standard resolution is a real eyesore. Literally.

Nobunaga's Ambition: Iron Triangle is clearly a PC game. It's almost painful seeing a game with such potential so completely undermined by the PlayStation 2. There was a time when we were willing to struggle through this, but back then, we hadn't yet seen the elegance of Civilization IV. We didn't know how much better Europa Universalis would get over successive iterations. We hadn't been wowed by the historical spectacle of the Total War games. Back then, Koei was synonymous with epic historical strategy. But that was then. Now, Nobunaga's Ambition: Iron Triangle on the PlayStation 2 is just a frustrating relic from a time long past.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.