Pure Chess

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Alternating / Online Alternating)

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Review:

Pure Chess is a version of the classic Board Game released in 2012 on PlayStation Vita, then released in 2013 on mobile devices, PlayStation 3, then in 2014 on PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS, and finally brought to Xbox One in 2016.

The Nintendo 3DS version of the game allows you to use either traditional gamepad controls or touchscreen controls, both which work well. However, unlike the Wii U version, which displays different camera angles of the game board on the TV and Wii U gamepad screen, the Nintendo 3DS version shows the 3D game board on top, and a simplified 2D version of the gameplay on bottom. While perhaps less technically-impressive, this is ultimately more practical, making it easy to distinguish which pieces are where while still having the option to see everything rendered in 3D on the top screen.

As for that 3D, the game uses detailed 3D pieces in a nice-looking 3D environment. However, this comes at a heavy cost, as the framerates do seem to suffer dramatically due to the detail here. As in “almost a slide show”. I can’t recall ever seeing a chess game with as poor graphical performance as this. In addition, some of the rooms and sets you can opt to play with are quite dark and difficult to see on the top screen, so that makes me all the more grateful for the simplified display on bottom. All this just makes me wonder if the attempt at fancier graphics was just more trouble than it’s worth on the Nintendo 3DS. Also, while you do have a few different rooms and chess piece styles to choose from, there aren’t many, as most of these seem to have been saved for paid DLC, which is a bit disappointing.

The visuals in this game are backed by some nice music in four different styles: classical, jazz, “chill” (synthesized music) and “nature” (more synthesized music, not nature sounds as you might expect). Players can opt to turn off one or multiple of these genres in the playlist, but they are unfortunately unable to select which individual songs they want playing.

When it comes to features, Pure Chess has a pretty good selection of options. There’s a full interactive tutorial to teach players everything from the basics to strategy, players can opt to turn on or off the ability to undo moves, and there are the other usual features you’d expect like the ability to set AI difficulty and whether to start as white, black, or random. This game also includes 100 chess puzzles (ranging from “mate in 1” to “mate in 5”), as well as the ability to play tournaments against AI opponents.

Speaking of opponents, I should note that while this game does support online play, when I tested the game there did not appear to be many online opponents to play against, so if you want human competition, you’ll have to bring your own. However, if you do happen to find someone to play against online, know that the game uses cross-platform profiles, so as long as you log into the same profile on different platforms, you can continue the same online game regardless of what platform you’re using at the time.

Overall, Pure Chess is mostly a fairly satisfying game of chess, and the $8 price tag doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch. The options and features here are satisfactory, and probably the biggest flaws are the lack of content and the terrible performance issues on Nintendo 3DS. Still, if you’re looking for a Chess game on Nintendo 3DS, this is a decent choice.

tl;dr – Pure Chess is a version of Chess with a good presentation and a good selection of features for the $8 price tag. It’s a bit lacking in content, and the Nintendo 3DS version suffers from some nasty performance issues, but otherwise this is a good game of Chess.

Grade: C+

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