Still, Battle Chess is meant to be an introduction for gamers who wouldn't normally give European chess a second thought. It's not as effective a learning tool as you might think, though, because you're not privy to the AI's long term plans and may not see its intentions. In that case, the AI will make the best move for you according to its calculations. Novice players can learn from the AI by switching sides and bumping the difficulty level up significantly during a game. At that point, the AI is quite adept and does think a good number of moves ahead, but it's not up to the challenge of taking on expert human chess players. However, each difficulty level is noticeably more skilled than the last, until you get to the final level. The AI doesn't plan ahead in the easiest mode, so even first time players can beat the computer with a bit of forethought and some applied baiting strategy. In addition to the three main effects, you also hear some minor effects during certain piece match-ups that are fairly well done but not particularly impressive.īattle Chess offers ten levels of difficulty. Only rooks have their own distinctive rocky sound. Armored units, like pawns and knights, move with the sound of rattling plate armor, while unarmored units move with a rustling of cloth. The three main sound effects are much less remarkable with each corresponding to one or more pieces.
Even if you don't have the slightest bit of interest in chess, you'll find yourself setting up several games just to see the pairing animations. The piece versus piece animations are even more interesting as you'll see them killing each other with a variety of comical or bizarre methods. The rook has a particularly good animation - it breaks from a stone tower shape into a monstrous humanoid form, lumbers to its destination, and settles back into its tower form. The military pieces, like knights and pawns, march sternly while the more courtly pieces, queens and bishops, have a light glide to their movement. Although the animations tend to be a little stilted with noticeable movement gaps between frames, the substance of the animations makes up for that. The character portraits have an impressive amount of detail, including little things like wrinkles in clothing and facial expressions. By using skillfully drawn-in blemishes to mimic veins, the game manages to create a fairly decent representation of a marble chessboard.
The game's 3D mode graphics are quite lavish. Conservative chess players may choke at this offbeat approach, but it turns out to be quite entertaining for beginners and quite challenging for intermediates. Battle Chess represents a fairly unique approach to designing a chess game around standard European chess, but make it fun and humorous for people who don't normally find chess entertaining.
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