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Chess may have started as a gentleman's game, but it's morphed over generations into a game enjoyed by young and old. That's the beauty of it: simple to learn, difficult to master. Once you figure out how the pieces move, you begin developing a deeper understanding of the strategy behind the moves. Your initial understanding tops out when you stop calling the knight a horse. To learn more, you have to play. At first glance, Konami's new chess title, Online Chess Kingdoms, represents opportunity for players to take that learning experience on the road. The problem with this title is that it skimps on the difficulty and the content, leaving little there for the advancing chess player.
The major problem is that it isn't just a chess game. Chess Kingdoms has a story mode that tosses in a little board game strategy with the chess. The issue is that the strategy of the story mode pales in comparison to any given battle on the chessboard. As you move your armies around the board, the goal is usually to simply take them and wipe out the opposing armies. Not a whole of deep thinking necessary to figure out how to do that. You move your army next to theirs and attack. A chess match resolves the skirmish.
Dramatist H.J. Byron once said "Life's too short for chess." He might have been talking about Online Chess Kingdoms.
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Of course there's some kind of story behind the strategy aspect, dealing with five kingdoms and their fight for supremacy, blah, blah, blah. There really isn't much to the story. It's pretty much an excuse for two different sides to sit down to a chess match. It doesn't really matter anyway, as anyone who is going to play this title could care less about the story. The true appeal is being able to play a quick match of chess on the road.
The chess matches feature the elaborately animated armies of the five kingdoms, who move across the board in 3D and strike down the opposing pieces when capturing them. While it's nice to occasionally have something different to look to, I always found myself pushing the select button to bring up a small standard 2D chessboard view. Even with the ability to rotate the camera around the environment, it's just too easy to mistake one piece for another when playing with the crazy 3D creature armies. I didn't want to take time thinking about which piece was which. I wanted to spend my time plotting my next move.
Unfortunately, plotting my next move didn't always require my full attention. A really good chess title should offer a challenge for each skill level, and Online Chess Kingdoms doesn't even come close. There are four difficulty levels to play against: novice, intermediate, advanced, and master. I'd consider myself an intermediate player, but in order to have any sort of challenge at all I had to play on master difficulty. As far as I could tell there wasn't much difference between the lower difficulties. On the other difficulties my computer opponent would get in a decent position, only to make a move that I can only describe as stupid for the sake of being stupid. Only a true beginner would move a knight out jut to move it back into place a few moves later, but such puzzling moves are common across the three lower difficulties.
Frustrated with the AI, I tried to test my knowledge of openings and endgames against some human opponents. The key word being "tried," as I struggled to connect to the servers to play a little online chess. A network error popped up every time. For a game that touts its online ability in its title, connectivity problems are inexcusable.
There is a reason that the preeminent chess title, Chessmaster, has made it to its 10th edition. It provides something for everyone, from beginner to master. I can respect that Leviathan was trying to do something different, but it just doesn't work. At the heart of any good chess game needs to be good chess for players of all levels. Dramatist H.J. Byron once said "Life's too short for chess." He might have been talking about Online Chess Kingdoms.
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