Pure Chess

Pure Chess
When it comes to chess, I know the basic movement of the pieces but never played enough to pick up on the strategy. I haven't tried playing chess for many years, so I thought I'd give it another go, and chose Pure Chess.

In terms of aesthetic options, there's a few different sets and a few materials within each category to add a bit of variety. There are many more interesting sets available as DLC. There's a few locations too which changes how the background looks.

There's a tutorial that goes through the pieces movement, and the rules of the game. You can play against the computer with many difficulty levels, or take on a human in the online mode. There's also a challenge mode which gives you the challenge of achieving a checkmate in one/two/three moves.

There's a few settings you can toggle to assist you but I found them rather limiting. There's a setting to show legal moves but you can't hover over opponent pieces to see where they can move. There is a setting to allow you to undo your move but you can't on a checkmate or stalemate which is extremely annoying; the game just ends. I am a chess beginner, so I did struggle to checkmate successfully and often ended up in a stalemate instead. It would have been a massive help to undo my last move and allow me to learn how to successfully end the matches.

Another annoyance was that it doesn't remember your preferred camera angle. I found all the angles awkward so just wanted a standard view. Having to change the view every time was annoying. You would have thought the gamepad would have made it easy to move the pieces or navigating the menus, but it's not the case. The buttons are too small and often aren't responsive when you try and press them.

I think your enjoyment of Pure Chess simply comes down to how much excitement you have for a chess game. It's not revolutionary, but it is competent.