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There was a time when a famous IP would have a game. Those games usually were exceedingly mediocre if not terribe. This games me reminds of those good old times. An exceedingly mediocre game with a contract which was set to kill this game and a developer which showed just enough effort not to actively disappoint people.

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This game promised to bring animated W40k skins into chess. There are games like that there and here, but they all have some issues and downsides. This game was no exception. If not poorly designed then low effort put into this game was on a display clear to see for anyone.

The main difference between normal chess is a special game mode. This is how developer tried to stand out. However, this mode seems like a poorly thought out and a half assed effort. It is a tacked on, bare bones RPG over chess game. This causes game to become a lot worse.

Prevents chess plays
• This is tacked on game mode which prevents you from playing chess normally. A good move becomes a bad one in this game mode. Regicide is not a game mode on its own. You cannot play it in its own way, like shooting, using abilities, etc. These things are all too weak while the main method of attack is still normal chess movement. This creates a design issue, you cannot make a good move, but you also cannot really not to defend or attack. It forces player to play chess, but not really. That looks like a lot of shuffling pieces around. Never committing to an attack. Game of Regicide just doesn't work as you cannot play chess nor play this RPG. It stands in a no man's land where it appeals to nobody and is just a gimmick.
  
  Negates aggression
  
• Regicide inherently prevents you from attacking. An enemy makes a mistake and exposes its knight. You take it with queen and establish a dominant position. However, now your queen is ahead of your positions which means that every enemy piece can fire at your queen while your army cannot focus fire on anything. This then forces you to fall back from an advantageous position. Even more, if your chess piece do not have many hitpoints left, you cannot do an aggressive play with that piece, because it will be just killed by abilities. Thus you are forced to just shuffle it to the back and to try and preserve it from all enemy pieces.
  
  A massive HP grind with a huge RNG
  
• Lets say that we accept all those horrid design choices. I have no taste and I love it. Then we fall into the issue that every chess piece have ton of health and it is very bothersome to grind enemy down. You need several turns to kill something above pawn and that is not even guaranteed. Even if you play accordingly to Regicide rules and use its abilities, you are still prone to just plain back luck. I used Rook aggressively in this game. Full health, protective abilities. However, my plan was ruined by AI getting insanely good RNG and just wiping my Rook in a single turn. So, game is not only bullet spongy, but also unpredictable with wildly different outcomes emerging from RNG. RNG in your chess game? Talk about developer really knowing his target audience and how to improve millennia old games...

Game in general has little to offer. Every part of this game is poorly done. It makes it difficult to stay with a game even if you want to find it appealing. You do not need much budget to make a story. Or to make an interesting tactical chess game. Sadly, while it might not need more money, it does take talent and effort which seems just to be absent.

Lack of black play
• Imagine a chess game where you cannot play as black... Yeah, this fact best describes just how much love developer really had for his own project...
  
  Animations are the same for each side
  
• It pretty much sums up this game. You might play with mighty space marines, but they behave exactly the same as Ork Boy. Vastly different factions share the same animations. This makes game feel cheap and unimmersive. This extends to lack of original abilities where Orks pretty much mirror what Space Marines can do. What was the point of even developing Regicide mode if you are going to make chess terrible and then refuse to give different abilities for the sake of non-existent balance?
  
  Lack of skins
  
• In the end, people wanted an animated chess game where they could play with their own favourite faction. Developer could not be bothered to introduce paid DLC for different factions. Factions which are in the game are merely recolorings of existing ones. People wanted different chapters, different races. Developer had a golden ticket to keep on making DLC after DLC, but it never cared. It never tried nor showed effort in developing good quality content. It was all just bare minimum which pretty much sums up this game. A bare minimum animated chess.

I wanted to try this game out for many years, but life being what it is, I never got a chance. Eventually it was killed. Developer lost right to sell this game, so he pulled the plug from his own servers and never bothered to rework progression and game for an offline mode. Game is pointless to play now and was questionable even back then. A dead game which never received attention it needed even when it alive and kicking just after its release.

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