In an interview with the game's producer Michi Ryu published on Siliconera on July 25, 2023, he revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the game’s development, which started just before the pandemic. The team had to adjust to an unfamiliar work style and structure, which made it difficult to exchange information with team members. Chat tools and video calls became crucial for communication during this period, which they normally did not use before.

Ryu mentioned another significant challenge during development was the unification of daimyo and retainers. The team wanted to show the theme of "living officers who think and act on their own", but found it difficult to decide to what extent retainers should act on their own. Some would act too smart and expand their territory if the player left them alone which Ryu believed would make for boring gameplay, but he also did not want to put extra stress on the player by making the officers stupid. Their solution to this was "not to indicate what is right to do but to let the players decide."

Conversely, Ryu could not recall anything that came together easily during the development process.

In an interview with the game's producer Michi Ryu published on Noisy Pixel on June 22, 2023, in response to a question asking if Nobunaga's Ambition: Awakening would bring together all of the series' history in honor of its 40th anniversary, he stated:


In a separate interview with Siliconera, he clarified that the game's concept was the most impactful change made during development, since in previous Nobunaga's Ambition titles, officers only acted when players ordered them to. With Awakening, officers are able to think and act on their own in various situations without orders, which Ryu felt was closer to how humans act in real-life and to how various officers during Japan's Warring States period would have acted without orders from daimyos, the latter of which they tried to show in the game.