I played pirate and I purchased it

Ok, the people who complained about this game aren't wrong. If you really like this genre and want a more strategic experience, play Nobunaga's Ambition Sphere of Influence. The spinoff called Ascension lets you play as an officer/retainer instead of ruler play like this game, but there's a catch: Ascension's AI manages to be more incompetent than even this game in terms of domestic development, so in the end it's actually a tad worse in that sense.

I love Ascension though. I love this series as a whole, and I really like Awakening. See, one of the features of Koei's games in particular is marriage between officers and Awakening finally lets a custom male Daimyo marry one of his female subordinates despite the fact that she might not even be "nobility". Thankfully, this isn't Crusader Kings, no marriage between relatives here. Even so, I admit it was always a little annoying to create a full odd family tree when you can create the intended "wife" character, yet they can't get married in the Nobunaga's Ambition series. You can do that in games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII for example. Of course, if both intended husband and wife are retainers, then it's even easier in this game and I appreciate that too.

Is the above even relevant for people who just like grand strategy games? Probably not. But I like creating whole family trees of created officers and Awakening finally gives you that sandbox in feudal Japan. Consider the fact that they already let you do that decently well in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTK) sister series, set in China. I really have no idea why it took them so long to transfer a feature from ROTK to NA.

I have heard people complain that Awakening is dumbed down compared to Sphere of Influence. People who make such complaints aren't wrong. But this game has improvements that I particularly like, so I would be lying if I gave it a thumbs down. If you, reader, prefer the strategy elements of this series, play Sphere of Influence. You'll love it, I'd be shocked if you didn't. However, if you are more of a beginner, or like the role-playing aspect of family lines and making a bunch of custom officers, you might like Awakening more. I mean, there's also Crusader Kings, but I've barely played those games so I can't really say further...

Koei has many faults, many times that it is has failed its audience including buggy games, relatively few updates, and especially a bizarre refusal to translate older games that already had English releases on console. But I have to say, Awakening's been a good time.