Absolute Chess

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Wireless Alternating), Download Play Supported

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Review:

Absolute Chess is a version of the classic Board Game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2010 and then grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when that system was released. This game is… Well, chess. You know, one of the oldest games still being played today. Look, if I have to explain chess to you, I think we’ll both just have to pack it up and admit that this relationship isn’t going to work out.

The presentation in this game is pretty good, using simple but unimpressive pixel art 2D visuals. There are two types of visualizations for pieces: “realistic, which looks okay but the pieces can be a little hard to distinguish from one another, and “comical”, which is abstract representations of pieces like you might see on countless simple computer chess games over the years, which don’t look even remotely realistic, but are easier to parse. This game is also adorned with anime-style characters representing the players, and they even have little win quotes at the end of matches like you often see in Fighting Games, which is a cute touch. These visuals are backed by a decent theme playing in the background, and it’s good that it’s decent, because it’s the only one you’re getting here.

There’s no tutorial here to get newer players acquainted with the game, but there is at the very least a written guide explaining the way the game works, how pieces move, and even some very basic strategy elements like splitting and discovery.

When actually playing a game, players have a few different options. There’s a standard “free play” mode to just play a single game against either a human opponent or an AI opponent of one of three difficulty levels. There’s also a Challenge mode where players are given increasingly harder conditions that they must play under, such as winning within a certain number of moves.

The controls here work very well, letting players use either the touchscreen or traditional gamepad controls. However, there aren’t many options within individual matches – you can’t set time limits, there’s no “undo” button or move suggestions for more novice players. You’re really just playing Chess. However, on the bright side of things, this game does support download play for playing against a friend… but not same-system alternating play, which seems like it would have been easy enough to implement.

Okay, so in the end, there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t in Absolute Chess, but for a game that only costs $2, Absolute Chess does offer a decent amount of good content. The core Chess game here is good, the Challenge mode content is unexpected but welcome, and the support of Download Play is excellent. This game is still an extremely far cry from a full-featured Chess game, but for $2 you wouldn’t exactly expect it to be, would you?

tl;dr – Absolute Chess is a version of Chess that lacks some basic features, like an undo button, a tutorial, and same-system alternating 2-player gameplay. But on the bright side of things, it offers multiplayer via download play, has some interesting challenges to try to complete, and the core chess game here is quite good. For its low $2 price tag, this is a pretty decent chess game, even if it isn’t even remotely close to a full-fledged game of chess.

Grade: B-

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