Posted October 18, 2008
Battle Chess Special Edition is basically 2 classic games in 1 package: chess and xiangqi. Yes, I did say "2", not "3", because the only thing different in Battle Chess 4000 from the original Battle Chess is the cheesy sci-fi theme. Except for the piece sets and battle animations, don't expect much more.
Chess is the standard Western chess game that pretty much everybody knows and love. Xiangqi is a relatively-fast chess variant from China featuring a different board, starting position and moving rules. And in both cases, you can already play them for free over the Internet against human opponents of the desired skill level easily.
The Battle Chess series was excellent and original back in its original release, and it should be recognized as an important part of video game history. However, in today's context, a question arises: what's the point of buying a bundle of 2 games that you can already play for free?
The trademark of the Battle Chess series is the animations given to the pieces. Every time you move a piece, it walks to the desired location. When capturing a piece or when a checkmate occurs, a battle to the death ensues on the board. It doesn't add anything to the gameplay, but it's still fun to watch. The best way to describe it is to look at the chess game at the end of the first Harry Potter movie. Don't expect something that epic though, although it's certainly funnier to watch.
The main problem though is that some of the animations are played way too much, and some others almost never. For example, in chess, half of the pieces are pawns, but it appears that the developers forgot about that and gave only one specific animation for each possible battle featuring pawns. You can still skip battles, but it's annoying.
As for the rest of the package, each game contains network play features, although archaic. DOSBox thankfully has a feature to convert old network protocols for modern PCs, but you'll still need to find another player outside of the game. Because of that, you'll most probably have to rely on the included AI, which can be set to a pretty good difficulty level for the casual player, but that can be defeated relatively easily by a hardcore chess/xiangqi player. You have the possibility of playing with a standard chess/xiangqi set, but that pretty much annihilates the only distinctive feature of this bundle. And finally there is a board editor, which is completely useless except for being able to watch the battle animations that you normally don't watch during a normal game.
If you're unfamiliar with the rules of each game, don't expect any kind of in-game tutorials, which is a major disappointment. Don't expect any extra content either, such as puzzles or challenges.
Therefore, I can only see Battle Chess Special Edition as a way to "trick" children into getting interested into playing chess or xiangqi, but be aware that the original Battle Chess contains blood and gore. For everybody else, the battle animations are most likely not worthy of your wallet.
Chess is the standard Western chess game that pretty much everybody knows and love. Xiangqi is a relatively-fast chess variant from China featuring a different board, starting position and moving rules. And in both cases, you can already play them for free over the Internet against human opponents of the desired skill level easily.
The Battle Chess series was excellent and original back in its original release, and it should be recognized as an important part of video game history. However, in today's context, a question arises: what's the point of buying a bundle of 2 games that you can already play for free?
The trademark of the Battle Chess series is the animations given to the pieces. Every time you move a piece, it walks to the desired location. When capturing a piece or when a checkmate occurs, a battle to the death ensues on the board. It doesn't add anything to the gameplay, but it's still fun to watch. The best way to describe it is to look at the chess game at the end of the first Harry Potter movie. Don't expect something that epic though, although it's certainly funnier to watch.
The main problem though is that some of the animations are played way too much, and some others almost never. For example, in chess, half of the pieces are pawns, but it appears that the developers forgot about that and gave only one specific animation for each possible battle featuring pawns. You can still skip battles, but it's annoying.
As for the rest of the package, each game contains network play features, although archaic. DOSBox thankfully has a feature to convert old network protocols for modern PCs, but you'll still need to find another player outside of the game. Because of that, you'll most probably have to rely on the included AI, which can be set to a pretty good difficulty level for the casual player, but that can be defeated relatively easily by a hardcore chess/xiangqi player. You have the possibility of playing with a standard chess/xiangqi set, but that pretty much annihilates the only distinctive feature of this bundle. And finally there is a board editor, which is completely useless except for being able to watch the battle animations that you normally don't watch during a normal game.
If you're unfamiliar with the rules of each game, don't expect any kind of in-game tutorials, which is a major disappointment. Don't expect any extra content either, such as puzzles or challenges.
Therefore, I can only see Battle Chess Special Edition as a way to "trick" children into getting interested into playing chess or xiangqi, but be aware that the original Battle Chess contains blood and gore. For everybody else, the battle animations are most likely not worthy of your wallet.
