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Addiction at a great price

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 20
Date: June 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When it comes to playing video games I have always been more of an action/sports fanatic...so why am I addicted to Chessmaster? I have never really played the game of chess before but I've always wondered what the big deal was about it, so after seeing this game advertised at a great price I decided to give it a chance. I'm glad I did!

This game has been outstanding for me as a beginner. It includes a complete "chess school" (do they actually have those??) feature that I am hooked on. After only a few lessons, I started to feel like I had inside knowledge on how to win at this game. The tutorial is thorough yet easy to understand. The different aspects of the game are broken down into small sections, and after a brief explanation of each one you are given a series of exercises that aid tremendously in the learning process (a la the old "doing is better than seeing" method). It is well-designed and, actually, fun. The chess lessons cover all levels of play and includes instruction from several grand wizards (or whatever they are called!) , so even advanced players will learn a lot from this feature.

Aside from being a great learning tool, it is the wide variety of gameplay options that makes Chessmaster such a great value. Ranked games, online play, and Puzzle of the Day are just a few of the features that are included. There are 150 different computer opponents, which is the largest number I have seen in a game of any type. It might not compare to the number of players online, but it still feels good when you beat someone and see your rating climb. Aside from twenty different sets of chess pieces, there is also a 3D battle chess mode that gives the game a little more action. I believe it could have been enhanced a bit, but it is still fun to watch.

With so many features included I have barely even cracked into this game. I am hooked on it and you just can't beat the price, which is less than most chess sets cost. I highly recommend it. Great for rainy days!

Checkmate! This is a Chessmasterpiece!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: June 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is actually designed to make you a CHESSMASTER YOURSELF! I was interested in the teaching prospects for this game and I was anxious to see what the PS2 would give us in the way of Chess. In just two days of playing this game, I find myself, at 36 years old, addicted to Chess again. It comes with a "Chess School" that is presented verbally and with text for students at any level including very well presented tutorials, drills, exams, commentaries on famous games,and puzzles to keep you or make you sharp! In the non rated game options there are several teaching and mentoring tools with and a cool "game analysis" feature visually animates "better" moves I could have made during the game. This is just the tip of the iceburg!

Once you feel like you are ready to take on the ChessWorld there are rated games and your rating is upgraded or downgraded depending on the outcome of games with some of the 150+ opponents with diverse playing styles and strengths you play against! Championship tournaments at different skill levels await players who love to compete. Your drill records, player rating, opponents defeated, and more all chronicled for you as a player!

There are 20 impressive, beautifully designed 3D chess sets ! Each with background, music, and distinct themes! One word of advice: get familiar with each piece so you don't mistake a bishop for queen and so forth between sets. There is even Fantasy Battle chess with animated action!

If you love Chess, truly want to be a "master" and own a PS2 get this game!

Worth the $20

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The first person to review this product, SleepyJD, must own a copy since he stated that this is chess for people who have no friends.

Terrific Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Great game. I never had so much fun in my life. Everybody in my family loves it.

Great for learning chess, so-so graphics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: August 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

In a world where Harry Potter is king, and Wizard's Chess captured the hearts of millions, it's no surprise that another animated chess game - Chessmaster - has hit the market.

The game has quite a collection of training systems - tutorials, exams, historic games, classic openings. But I went diving right for the fantasy chess, with its animation.

You can choose from the orcs or the humans, white or black. Each side has six leaders to choose from - each with his own style of play. You can play single player, two player or just watch. The play has a variety of backgrounds - stone walls, desert and more.

As much as I used to love Battle Chess and enjoy playing it, this version really wasn't that great. The fights were all extremely simple. While you could spin around the board, you couldn't zoom in or out, and often the not-great graphics made it hard to tell exactly which unit was which. The game played was a good one, but the graphics and angles made me quit back out to the regular game.

The main chess game has a variety of boards and piece styles as well. Each 'theme' has its own pieces, board, background, music. While I enjoyed the Halloween and gnome sets, again they were hard to use and fuzzy at best. I settled on the Irish wood set and got going.

The gameplay again was great, and the tutorials, lessons and examples really help you learn at your own pace and make solid progress. Since that's really what the game is about, I highly recommend you choose a nice, simple chess layout - maybe even going for the 2-D symbol set. Don't fool with the fancy backgrounds - just concentrate on the wealth of information the game offers as far as learning the game. There's even an online option for when you've gotten your feet wet and are ready for a human challenger.

Recommended for anyone wanting to learn the game of chess, or hone their skills.

Chess for lazy people.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 75
Date: March 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is chess for people who are too lazy to set up their board or have no friends. I think it should be a 9.99 bargin title.

Excellent, but....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. But also, a bit frustrating.
The plethora of opponenets is great and the computer AI is tweaked to perfection but there are some things that make this game a bit annoying. One of these things is that the boards are a tad bit small. It is very hard to see your pieces unless you are either squinting or have your nose touching the screen. Also, I've found that most of the boards are hard to play with by the way the pieces are designed, so most of the time i'm playing on the simple figurine style. And last but not least, the chess battlefield sucks. I really dont need to explain it, it sucks. Yeah sure the pieces slay eachother, but when you cant remember if that guy is your bishop or your queen, it creates a problem.

But lets get back to the pros shall we?

I love how you have a rating, especially if you're a beginner because it makes it very simple to find a reasonable opponent, not some program that is going to whoop you in about ten moves. Also I like the tournaments. They're cool because you can choose them on what type of player you are, such as a defensive player, or a trader.

Overall the Pros outweigh the Cons by a landslide. Great game, great price... This is a must have for any chess player; master or beginner.

You really do learn, but...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on New Year's day 2005 as part of my resolution to learn to play chess. I read all the review and weighed the good and the bad, and bought the game new at a video store.

The good thing about the game is that you really do learn to play chess. From the main menu you click on "tutorial" and then you are directed through screen after screen which explains each chess piece in detail, teaching you the legal moves for each piece. After a while I got a little impatient and went to the Battle Chess when I hadn't finished the tutorial, but after 2 moves I got my (...)kicked so I'm back in the chess school!

The bad thing is that this game is hopelessly boring. I have to admit that I thought the game would be like the front cover of the disc case but you will see nothing like that. While you're going through the tutorial, low-register easy listening music plays in the background while a male voice reads from the instructions on the screen. Also, what the other reviewers said about the mini chess board is true. I thought it wouldn't matter to me since I have a large TV screen but it's set up so that half the screen is the chess board, the other half is taken up by the on-screen instructions. Why couldn't they put the instructions as a moving caption below? In the battle chess, you can barely see the pieces -- as if the figures are extremely fuzzy and once they start moving, you don't know which figure corresponds to what chess piece.

This being said, I would still recommmend this if your goal is to have an intelligent and intimate knowledge of the game. You learn different strategies, how to gain a holistic perspective of the board and it is easy to navigate. I admit I've only done the tutorial and Battle Chess so far, and I might even buy that cartoony looking chess game designed for kids (Fritz and something?) just to make it a bit more fun for me to play. There is no doubt that you will learn, but like me, you may fall asleep a few times in the process!

Loaded Chess Teaching Game for Great Price

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

In case you are not familiar with the Chessmaster series, like I was when I initially purchased this game, Chessmaster is an excellent teaching chess game. Players of all skill level will be able to find something worthwhile to take away from this game. Whether you are starting out from scratch and don't know a Rook from a Bishop, or you know the basic moves but are wonder how the heck people ever develop chess strategies, or even if you're searching for Bobby Fischer...this game has everything to meet your needs.

The basics are taught to you via lessons ranging from explaining what each piece is and how it moves, and even the best ways to play said piece...to some of the more advance moves like "castling," but it's not all about teaching; Chessmaster includes a rigid points system that allows you to play ranked and unranked games on or offline, whereby you can play opponents below your level, at your level, or that far exceed your level in hopes of improving your skills.

Whether you are looking to learn how to play chess, wanting to dust the cobwebs off of your collegiate game you once commanded, or looking to challenge current day chessmasters...Chessmaster is definitely the game for, and is a steal at its' current price.

Entertaining but Horribly Put Together

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Some group of computer designers decided to make a bunch of money and spent a minimal amount of time sloppily compiling this program to market because they knew people with PS2's who liked chess would buy it.

That said, it's actually well worth the 10 bucks you can buy it for now, especially if you are a mid-level player or beginner.

Good things about the game:

Excellent tutorials. The Josh Waitzkin annotated games are awesome and instructional. The famous game library is cool. The Pandolfini chess rating exam is highly entertaining (though I think you can find it on the web now for free). The number of potential opponents and their different styles is entertaining. You'll get better playing this game, which is what it's good for.

Bad things:

This game was lazily and sloppily compiled. The controls are totally unintuitive and not user friendly. As far as I can tell, you can't even hit a button to return to move one of a game when analyzing it. You have to slowly go from move 70 back to 1 move by move. The game analysis may seem impressive at first, but it's totally flawed. You can't follow it easily because the computer starts talking before its moved all the pieces back to their starting positions- its totally frustrating. Also, the computer will often not finish announcing your opponents move, so if you are playing over your own board in a timed game, you may not even realize it's your turn while your clock is ticking.

Probably the most frustrating thing about this game is the time controls. The computer opponents are rated, but as far as I know, the given rating is only accurate if you play at the time-wastingly plodding tournement time of 40 moves in 120 minutes. I don't have time to do this. So if you pick an opponent with a 1600 rating, he will not play at 1600 unless you want to spend 6 hours playing one game of chess. So, you'll have a lot of people claiming to beat a really high level chess personality because they were using faster time controls. Subtract about 50 from the actual rating. To test this, there are a couple of personalities who move instantly no matter what time control you set it on- Max and Vlad for intermediate players. For those who don't have all day to play one game, these players are fun to play against. Max will move instanty no matter what time constraints he is on. But if you set him to 40/120 he will ALWAYS beat himself at 40/60. If you set Max at 40/120 he will beat higher ranked players playing at 40/80. This is really stupid I think. Another problem is that the computer sees all tactics no matter what level you put it on. This is unhumanlike. It might see a complex 6 move mating attack at a low 1300 level while the same personality will hang a piece. Very silly. The computer can't discern a brilliant and hard to see move from a an obvious one. Also, the graphics are virtually worthless. I can only play using the 2-d figurines. I usually play over my own board. The battle-chess mode is literally unplayable. You can't even see what piece you're moving. I just can't even believe that someone marketed this game before improving upon this. Its just a money making scheme.

Overall:

This is fun, not user-friendly, poorly and quickly constructed to make money for UBISOFT, but entertaining nonetheless. However, to improve and make the use of your time its better to have a computer opponent who moves quicker, and analyses positions better such as Fritz. The tutorials alone are worth the current price. You can pick this up for cheap at any gamestop store or here on Amazon. But you can also get a version of Fritz at Target for 10 bucks which is better in many ways. I say get this game mainly for the tutorials and play Fritz for the chess.

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