Online Chess Kingdoms Review

Vicious Cycle and Infinite Interactive took a Bejeweled hybrid game and combined it with an RPG experience to make a masterpiece known as Puzzle Quest. In the same vein, Konami (developed by Leviathan Games) took the age-old game of chess and created something along the same line, though calling it a masterpiece is a large stretch. This isn’t your gentleman’s game of yore. It combines a fantasy storyline of galactic proportions with the deceptively challenging game of chess. So what? Does it really do anything different than any other chess game we’ve seen before?

That’s a question that can’t be answered directly because it does and yet it doesn’t provide anything different. What you do get with Online Chess Kingdoms is a chess game with more reason to play than being bored, old, or a child prodigy, but there’s just no getting around the fact that chess is and always will be a game that takes time and patience and lots of both if you like to win—3D graphics and storytelling just can’t change that.

Online Chess Kingdoms certainly delivers, however, original character designs and a story befitting an epic RPG. The style is nothing short of prodigious in the variety and execution. Though the characters don’t have more than a couple of “attacks” as you takeover an enemy piece and destroy it, they have some fun and exotic movements based on the character type. Of the Chaos world (one of the five created by the god-like being named Phrenos: Chaos, Order, Magic, Reason, and Spirit), such an eccentric attack can be seen by the [traditional] Knight, a horse-like being that attacks with its hind feet coming forward from underneath. And when it moves across the board it does so with a somersault. Every character is unique in movement and style, nicely rendered and fluid in movement, also having unique sound effects when attacking. The background music also lends to the aura of the world and acclimate you to the games fantasy-based settings. It’s serene yet vibrant, peaceful yet edgy.

Since this is a story-driven game—assuming you chose to play the Story Mode vice the Classic Mode—there has to be some reason and preamble to any conflict. When any two of the five worlds are at odds, a flat, overhead world map is portrayed. On this map are grids that have structures in random locations that you or the enemy can overtake by moving his “army” across the grids one at a time (including diagonal) a la Stratego. When the two armies reach the same grid war begins. The battlefield is drawn (the chess board) in a pre-rendered environment based upon the world you are on. These environments are original and neat, if a bit odd at times, and do well to present an atmosphere nothing like a traditional game of chess could inspire.

Once you’re at war, you are at the mercy of your own wits pitted against the enemy AI’s. You’ll probably lose even on Novice difficulty if you’re new to chess. The AI is extremely smart and offers a challenge to even the most visceral of players. But hey, isn’t that what chess is about? If it were easy it wouldn’t have survived the centuries.

If you’re feeling subjugated by the computer AI, you can use the PSPs Wi-Fi functionality and try your luck against another human opponent. A pair of homo sapiens can battle mano-y-mano for universe supremacy… if you actually know someone else with the game, that is. The Online mode, however, let’s you duke it out brainwave style with anyone who may happen to be as nerdy as you. It often takes a while to get a match and will probably get owned by the first person you find. Face it; you have to be a super-dork to be playing this game online at any given time. You can’t make this stuff up, people.

As neat and fun as the premise of this game sounds—having a storyline and some great graphics and design—it’s still just a chess game. It doesn’t reinvent chess nor is it an innovative hybrid such as Puzzle Quest. So to answer my own question: it doesn’t really provide anything different in gameplay. However, it does offer an alternate outlook on the game and why one would consider playing it. If I was new to chess, this would be the game I’d grab to be my starter, after I learned the basics of the game from an online search or something. But I’m no veteran either (translation: I pretty much suck) and though I had fun with the game, I got frustrated and bored quickly because I’m not a chess fanatic.