A masterpiece of strategy gaming. Simple yet stunning in it's ability to render a complex period of history.
In Nobunaga's Ambition II the basis of every fief's economy is the production of rice. Rice is the only commodity in the game that can be produced, bought and sold - weapons may be purchased but not produced, and trade is restricted by the movement of merchants from province to province (some remote or culture-poor provinces may be visited infrequently to the point of crippling the economy). This may seem like a dumbed-down economic model, but the concentration on rice makes integrating the economies of captured provinces manageable, especially later in the game. Diplomacy is a powerful weapon in Nobunaga's Ambition. Aside from building alliances and pressuring enemies for tribute, it is possible to whittle away a daimyo's power by bribing his samurai away and into your army along with his men. This makes for a very satisfying political system which emulates real-life intrigues and makes diplomacy just as important as raising a dominate military.
Warfare is played out like a hex-based wargame, but on a staggered square grid. Each samurai in your service has soldiers which make up your army, and each has his own specialty (infantry, cavalry and rifles). Samurai need to be loyal as well as skilled or they may defect to the enemy. Combined arms tactics are encouraged by having the units have strengths and weaknesses. In most cases, though, it is desirable to have a force led by skilled cavalry samurai for attacking, and leaving rifles and infantry to garrison castles against attacks.
Nobunaga's Ambition II is a great game that is better than the sum of its parts. Each of element of gameplay has been tuned so that everything fits together in a very manageable epic strategy game. A classic.