Actually, I am really ashamed and sorry that Battle vs Chess has never received any forum post here on GOG and now I am coming in here, looking as if I only want to negatively rant about this game big time. Yet, I can assure you that this is not the case in any way. This thread shall serve as a part of my personal experience about this game and as a warning for new players of Chess or people like myself that just play Chess quite rarely and can only play it on a computer, due to the lack of family members or friends being able to play Chess.

Let me assure you at first that Battle vs Chess is not a bad game at all. Instead, it is extremely beautiful, even now, in 2025. I love the fantasy characters and their animations, I love the scenic fantasy backgrounds and even the standard chessboard, which, surprisingly, is the only one with a numerical system on its sides, gives you enough graphics to enjoy Chess. When it was on sale, I was blended by the graphics and the trailers and have immediately bought the Grandmaster Premium Edition, which includes everything that has ever been published of the game, including both DLCs, the artbook and the 4k Wallpapers. Alright, the two new maps the DLCs are giving to you are already included in the official trailer, so the developers have already made the maps, while the entire game was still in development, yet decided to make even more money, instead of having those two maps included from the very start, but to me it was still worth the price. Yes, it gives you so much for the money, especially on sale, but I still need to warn you big time. Because if you believe that you can just jump right into it and enjoy Chess, just because the game looks beautiful and that it has so much to offer, or if you even want to allow your children to play it and learn Chess in the process, due to its fantasy setting that children may be able to like easily, then you are, in my opinion, very wrong. That is because the game is brutally hard, as well as unforgiving, even on the easiest difficulty setting possible. And yes, that is not a bad joke!

I do not know my personal ELO rating, but I am not a newcomer to Chess, having learned Chess not just by playing “Lego Chess”, which has been published in 1998 and which I hope that GOG can one day get its hands on, but because I have also been playing many matches with my grandfather when I was a child and teenager. Sometimes I have defeated him, sometimes he defeated me, which means we were quite equal. The last matches against a real person were two matches in a row against a classmate of mine, which happened 20 years ago, and I did beat him on both occasions very easily, as he was just a beginner. And yes, I do know the tricks, like “En Passant”, “Castling”, “Fork” and “Pin”, so I am far away from being a master, nor am I the most stupid Chess player that you could ever come across. If I would have to guess my ELO rating, I would not score it higher than maybe 1.300. On my old Windows 7 computer I have played Windows Chess from time to time and I have believed that this one is already good enough for a challenge. Well, this is what I did actually believe before I have bought and played Battle vs Chess.

The game uses the Fritz 11 engine for its AI and although this version is already outdated today, I actually cannot think of an even stronger version, because this one does already punish you with just every move that you’ll do. The difficulty levels of the game range from 0 (easiest) to 9 (hardest), yet even on the easiest difficulty setting the game’s AI is totally unforgivable. In games like “Lego Chess” and Windows 7 Chess the AI tends to make mistakes on lower difficulty settings, giving new players or players that just want to test things out an opportunity to receive a rather easy victory and therefore the feeling of some kind of early accomplishment. Well, that is what most players would expect from an AI on lower difficulties, because if the game is way too hard to new players already, they will just move on and forget about it, which is bad for the game.

Be advised that in Battle vs Chess you will get wiped from the board totally easily, even on the lowest difficulty setting possible and it also doesn’t matter if you start as White or as Black. For example, if you are playing White and you tend to play defensive from the very beginning and wait for Black to attack, Black will wait as well and is not just castling its King, but is actually surrounding the King with all kinds of pieces, while blocking all of your moves of getting forward, because if you dare to move one of your pieces forward, it will get easily slaughtered. There is never an open space in the AI’s defense, nor can you ever catch it by surprise. Attacking one piece will just make you lose the piece against another and then the AI will have a second or even a third figure to make a counterattack, so that you will always have losses of higher-ranked pieces, than the AI, if you decide to do continued attacks on the same square. I’ve had numerous games already, especially when I was playing as White, where the AI had every square under protection by one of its pieces and there was no way for me to make a move forward or to the flanks without getting any kind of loss. Even if I would sacrifice a Pawn and the AI responds with another Pawn, therefore making me losing my Pawn, I would never get into a good position on which I can attack that Pawn with one of my more valuable pieces, without the AI having something ready to strike on that one. This tactic is working in “Lego Chess” and Windows 7 Chess, but not here at all, no, not even on the easiest difficulty setting.

It's simple, because no matter what I would try and no matter where I go, the AI would just slaughter my pieces. And if I try to get immediately into the offensive right with my first move, trying to capture the center as quick as possible, which sometimes is advised by more experienced players, the AI is quickly putting my pieces into jeopardy with its own pieces, forcing me to build up my defenses and in the end ruining all of my tries, so that we have a stalemate again, during which I cannot move forward, as the AI just waits for me to be so stupid, while the AI itself just digs in and not going into an offensive either, which could suddenly put me in favor. And if it actually attacks, especially when it plays White, I was already capable of betting all of my money to the fact that the AI will exactly know what I will do next, so it always has the answer to every one of my moves, no matter what I think of. It sometimes went so far that I was believing that somehow my computer can read my mind or can actually hear my voice, it is this bad! It never makes just one mistake, yet as soon as I am just making the slightest mistake, the AI is immediately rushing into that gap and is getting me into a very dangerous position, ruining just everything that I have been thinking of as well. Sure, if I am doing a mistake as a player that is truly my mistake, but seriously, I am playing on difficulty level 0, the easiest one possible! And yes, until now I have played all of my matches only on this difficulty level, because this one is already unforgiving. During the past days I did come to the belief that Chess matches between humans are all about who is doing the first mistake or oversees an important position, while their opponent is then using this mistake to their own advantage. Yet, this is impossible with the superhuman AI, which surprises me even more, because some human must actually have created this AI and any AI is just as good as the one who created it.

The game has two campaigns and having read that in the last mission of both of them the player has to play a standard game of Chess with the AI being on its highest difficulty setting, which, according to articles I have read, gives it an ELO rating of 2.500 and therefore a Grandmaster skill level, I do actually wonder how many players have ever beaten just one or even both campaigns of the game. As not everyone of us is a tournament player, I think it cannot be too many or maybe the game was meant for tournament players and/or Chess grandmasters only. I for myself am already happy when I force an enemy piece to retreat, but I was never able to catch it, especially not by surprise, as the AI is just way too good for a human player.

The only way in which I am capable of winning a match is the “Duel Mode”, but this one is really laughable. There are almost no tactics involved, as you can defeat any piece with just any piece and you can just move forward mindlessly, Blitzkrieg-style. Just attack every piece, press the arrow keys at the right time when meeting an enemy piece and you will have defeated it and conquered its place, while you can send them back to where they came from, if your piece is the defending piece. If you are good enough, you can slaughter entire Chess armies with only a pawn. It was also the first time ever that I have defeated my White opponent as Black, by just rushing forward with my Queen towards the enemy King. And no, even he wasn’t a challenge and could not even strike back at my Queen, as I was too good in pressing the right keys at the right time.

Thinking about the fact that legendary Chess player Garry Kasparov has been defeated by an IBM computer in 1997, while Battle vs Chess is using the most modern Fritz engine available at the time of its development, which obviously did happen more than a decade later, I can only imagine that this one must be even stronger than the IBM computer that blew Kasparov from the board. How shall I, a totally normal Chess playing person with no chance of ever being as good as Kasparov or any other of the greatest Chess players of all time, be therefore able to defeat the AI of Fritz, which is being used in Battle vs Chess and must be way stronger than the IBM computer that defeated Kasparov? Now I understand why many Chess players believe that AI has actually ruined Chess, as the computers are capable of calculating a million possible moves, all of their possible outcomes, therefore the reaction of the human player, and the possible moves after every one of those outcomes within just a split second, “thinking” at least a hundred turns forward, all with lightspeed. We all know that the human brain just isn’t capable of that and it seems that Battle vs Chess wants to teach you to respect computers big time. I have also become demotivated, after I have read articles in which it is stated that when two Grandmasters have a match and both play “perfect Chess” then the match can only result in a draw, but never in a clear victory for anyone of those two. I will obviously never become a Grandmaster, I am just an average Joe who likes to play Chess from time to time, with no interest in tournaments or any of that stuff, but it seems that for such an average Joe the game Battle vs Chess has just not been made. And don’t make me start writing about the hard Chess puzzles. There is one (E. Piug “Schackbladet” 1906) in which you can only defeat the enemy King within two turns if he actually moves forward, after you have been moving with your Queen and forcing him to stay in his line, as the Queen and a Rook are blocking the upper and lower line. To defeat him, he should move one square to the right, so that you can get your Queen into a position on which she is protected by a Bishop in the upper left corner, while the enemy King cannot flee from her. Yet, he obviously never goes to that square after I have made my first move, as he always makes the same move to the left and therefore to the A-line of the board, making it impossible to defeat him with the only last move I got. I have even gone so far to recreate the situation on a real chessboard of mine, thinking of the possibility to defeat the King within just two moves, but it is absolutely impossible, because the only way possible needs to have the AI allowing its King to make one step to the right, but he will never do that. Again, the Fritz AI can NEVER be caught by surprise or is making any kind of mistakes, making this game extremely frustrating to the average Chess player like myself and maybe even to tournament players.

So, my advice to anyone thinking of buying this game, while not wanting to make this thread to look like a review, is this: Wait for a discount and be then ready for an extreme amount of frustration. The special modes can be nice and give you a rather easy victory, especially the “Duel Mode”, but if you just want to play a match of classic Chess then you better prepare yourself for an extreme punishment, that will make you go insane and, in the end, like it happened to me, delete the game from your hard drive. Because no matter what you will do, the AI has an always perfect (!) answer, even if you try to think a few turns ahead, making this game impossible to beat. I will now go and buy myself a book by Siegbert Tarrasch, a German Grandmaster from the 19th century, trying to learn more about Chess first, before I maybe try to come back to Battle vs Chess, but I actually don’t think that even this will help me to defeat an AI that plays Chess already on a perfect level, even with the lowest difficulty setting activated.

Now I am ready for your opinions and advices, just please no bashing like “You are just too stupid to play Chess.”, because I am really not and just thought it may be helpful to others, that are thinking of buying the game, because this game, no matter how beautiful it looks, is, without a doubt, the toughest videogame about Chess that I have ever played. It even made me going back to play “18 Wheels of Steel”, because when I play I want to relax and not get frustrated.