Customer Reviews

John N. Hansen: Chess 4

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I tried this game with 3 other people and it is totally awesome!! As soon as you checkmate someone, you get to control all of their pieces! As you can infer, it gets very good with only 2 people left, each controlling 2 chess sets. Overall, this game is the bomb. The best part is being able to play 2-4 people at once.

I've only played once so far because it takes a little over two hours to play if you've got good opponents. Normal chess is like "how can I manuever around this person while avoiding their attacks" while this is like "I'm in the center of chaos". If you aren't watching everything, every second, you're done for. One person I was playing with had another person's queen surrounded with 2 of his own knights and a knight he had captured, and player 2 went to move his queen towards a king, paying acute attention to whether he would put himself in a spot where any of those three knights could kill him. He took his fingers off his queen finally, after determining he was safe, and I killed him with a pawn. This game is intense, I love it.

Let me break this down to different parts:

The Chess Pieces:
1. Size is perfect
2. Design & looks are interesting & yet recognizable.
3. Color is good
4. Although it's plastic, the weight is still ok, it can sit still on the board.

The Board:
1. Nice durable & sturdy carton.
2. Can be folded into quarter of its size.
3. The seams are not noticeable when you unfold it.
4. The design looks good except the artwork on each square that's sometimes giving me the dizzy feeling when i look at it for too long.

The Game:
This is the best feature of this product - i've been playing Chess for over 30 years & the concept of this game is G-R-E-A-T...just like the description on the box- it's not just a game, it's a WAR! I suggest that you may want to revised the rule just like what other reviewers had mentioned esp when a player conquered a "kingdom". And since this could be a great game for a party, I'm planning to create my own version of this game with larger pieces & not so dizzy game board. I already ordered a Staunton Chess pieces which of course will come in Black & white; then I will order another similar set & will dye it with a different color like Gold & Silver. I recommend this to anyone who is a Chess afficionado, not for novice peeps. Hope this helps...I'm getting one for my Chess Buddy who lives in Australia!

I've had this game for about 12 years now and I love it! It's SO much different than having only one opponent to worry about. It makes you think a lot more than in regular chess. There are a few different rule variations available too. Awesome game! Highly recommended! It means it when it says "Chess is no longer a battle, now it's WAR!"

I'd like to see a higher quality board and pieces, but for the price, it's worth it.

This chess game is crazy! Your normal chess strategy doesn't apply in the beginning of the game. New strategy is different when playing as a team. This makes chess to a different level. Love it!

The 4 Way chess game is an awesome "social" experience. My friends couldn't believe how much fun it was to play. At first we got the rules wrong - which I admit was even more fun than when we played the "right" way. It may intimidate some players, but novices love the idea of having your pieces fly all over the board causing chaos. This game turns bad players into bad and dangerous players!

Bought this to play chess with more than one person and I just loved it! It is actually a different game than "just chess," but as a chess quasi-expert (was national champion in Ecuador as a 12 year old) I find this game exciting and challenging.

This is a good game and can teach children a lot about thinking things out and problem solving. I had only two problems with the game. 1.The chess pieces are to small and #2.The color of the piecee are so close of being the same color it can confuse everyone is in the middle of the board.

I like the feature of color coding for the different pieces. They really quite shiny. One might be able to draw some extra grid around the four corners to play 20 x 20 weiqi on the front board.

As fun as this game is there is a terrible imbalance in 3 player games. My friends and i corrected this by having the fourth army put in as a NEUTRAL army controlled by the other players. At the end of round one player one (the player who went first) moves for neutral, then in round 2 player 2 plays neutral etc, Neutral is "last" in play order so it should be positioned as such with play going to the left, it makes the game much less unfair for the player who gets stuck between the other 2 and players can use the neutral army to attack each other! I could not give the product five stars because THEY should have thought of this rule and included it in the rules and they did not.