From today’s point of view, the graphics of Interplay’s Battle Chess seem highly inferior, but it’s still easy to see what made the game great back in 1988. While the gameplay itself wasn’t something to talk about--it’s simply chess after all--capturing the opponent’s pieces made it shine with unique and entertaining battle animations. All other features aside, this uniqueness was what I was hoping for when starting up Topware Interactive’s similarly named Battle vs. Chess. Sadly, it isn’t there. What’s left is fantasy chess with nice aesthetics, a very small amount of mini-games, and new gameplay features that potentially kill the idea of chess completely.

Battle vs. Chess’ name makes it quite clear what to expect. You find yourself in the middle of the struggle between the white defenders of order and chaos’s blackish army. A fight that will obviously be resolved in a fierce battle of chess pieces. While there is the option to play a standard game against the famous Fritz! engine on ten different difficulty levels, Battle vs. Chess offers some alternatives as well. For once, there are new ways to build your army. In a classic game of chess you usually start with eight pawns, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, a queen, and of course the king lined up on your side of the board. Now, four new placement options--tactical, recruit, madness, and madness recruit--mix this standard up a bit and offer new possibilities like starting with two queens right in the middle of the board. This can lead to very interesting and intense games early on without breaking the core mechanics of chess.

 

 

Then there are Battle vs. Chess’s true additions to the classic gameplay, namely Duel and Slasher mode. What’s so bad about these modes is that they enable you to easily win the game within a hand-full of turns--using only a single piece and ignoring any danger to it. This is because both modes start mini-games whenever a piece tries to capture another one. If you win such a game against an attacking piece, it is forced back to its initial square while the defender survives and rages on. In Duel mode, abusing good QTE skills--which is far easier to master than actual chess--it’s no problem to aggressively march into the enemy ranks and checkmate the king within three turns.  Slasher is a bit more interesting than Duel mode because you actively fight alongside AI companions who tend to die quickly, but with mighty pieces such as rook, queen, and king it’s still no real challenge. Playing any of these two modes, anybody could kill a high level Fritz engine--once a privilege of famous chess grandmasters. With a quick hand you can easily compensate for mistakes that else might have caused a crushing defeat and rob the game of its tactical depth. That might seem like a nice feature if you’re no skilled player, but it’s simply not chess anymore. And if this wasn’t bad enough, both mini-games are quite repetitive as well.
 

 

The order and chaos campaigns are closer to real chess and offer some interesting challenges like an army of pawns to fight off some bishops or deployable reinforcements after ten very, very long turns. They are not meant for beginners though. The learning curve is steep and the AI gets significantly stronger with every match--without the possibility to turn the difficulty down even the slightest bit. The basic tutorials might ease you a little into the game if you don’t know how to play chess, but they won’t help you against the strong AI. But while beginners might give up after only a few fights, the campaign alone will keep skilled players challenged and occupied for quite some time--while nothing else will. There are a few chess themed mini-games, but none of them fill more than a few hours. “Challenges” contains only the 20 levels long Treasure Hunt where you use your pieces to fork two or more gems and build up points in doing so. There also are two different “One-Timers” where you’ve got limited time to move your piece to the right square. This can be quite entertaining for a few rounds, but gets old very fast. And then there are the Standard and Hard Puzzles. Together these are 22 classic chess problems as you might find them printed in a newspaper. That’s basically just an appetizer for the real deal. If you buy a book containing problems like these you get hundreds, maybe even thousands. But this full prized retail game comes with a disappointingly small number. After only a few hours you’ll have them beaten and no reason to ever look back.
 

 

Even if the gameplay leaves something to desire, the presentation in style of the ’88 chess fan favorite Battle Chess might still be a reason to buy this instead of Fritz 12 or an equally good chess game. Compared to a real chess board, Battle vs. Chess might not look as classy, but it sure pleases the eye. The whole graphical style fits the plot about order and chaos. Though not many in number, the chess boards and their surroundings are designed with care for the aesthetics. And while the queens look a little bit like dolls because of their complete lack of facial animations, every piece has a very appealing look to it. Both sides’ designs differ enough to easily make out which of these armies came from hell and which from heaven  (even without the colors), but at the same time you won’t mistake a pawn for a rook or vice versa. The big disappointment here is the actual battles.  Every piece has two different ways to execute an attack move and dies with the same animation every time. So basically there are twelve different animations for every side. In Battle Chess every piece did something slightly different depending on the piece it was attacking, which leads to 36 different animations full of humor and sorceresses-eating golems. Of course it would have been far more work to do this for both sides, but it would have been an awesome addition. It’s not the same developer and not the same franchise, but naming and presenting it in such a similar way stirred up hopes that sadly where not fulfilled.
 

 

With fond memories of the last fantasy chess I played, I was very curious about Battle vs. Chess. Though it isn’t a bad game--you can play fantasy chess after all--it’s neither worth paying 40 bucks. The gameplay additions might be fun against the CPU for a few rounds, but they completely destroy the tactical core of chess. The campaign can be frustrating at times for unskilled players, but at least it’s challenging while still mixing in nice features. The mini-games on the other hand entertain for no more than a few hours and are nothing but a small bonus that should have been much bigger or left out completely--especially the puzzle section. So if you’re looking for an aesthetically nice fantasy chess that brings in some additions to the classic chess gameplay, this might be the game for you. But if all you seek is classic chess that not only has an awesome engine everyone can compete against, but also tons of additional content, you might want to look elsewhere. Fritz is always a good start.


Of course you can play Battle vs. Chess with a friend or stranger as well. It’s nice to see that they not only offer Internet and LAN mode, but head to head as well--meaning that you and your opponent play on the same computer.  You can also always use a few additional rules like making two moves at once, but the biggest difference to single player is the option to turn on fog of war. This means that you can only see the squares where your pieces can move to. Once again this changes classic chess by quite a bit, especially since the king can now--contrary to basic rules--move onto squares that are under attack--meaning you lose without knowing it until it’s too late.

Chess is a multi player game so Battle vs. Chess was basically born for this mode. The additional rules mix it up a bit and leader-boards motivate to become the next online grandmaster.  While Duel mode still destroys the core of chess, having a human opponent makes it a lot more challenging and fairer. Biggest problem here is that it’s not so easy to find good matches or even a match at all because not that many people seem to play it online. Still, even if there were more, Battle vs. Chess seems to be a well-developed download title sold as fully-priced retail game.