The chess puzzle is great.

[DarkFenix]

With all these threads moaning about it, I figure I'd make one praising it.

I don't play chess as a hobby, I'm not especially good at it, but I do know how to play quite passably. This and the other puzzles in the game have been a welcome breath of fresh air compared to puzzle minigames in pretty much every other game nowadays. They actually required me to think (not very hard, but think all the same), in the case of the chess puzzle required me to plan even.

I wish more games would reach out a bit with puzzles and minigames, to require the tiniest bit of intelligence from their players. I don't mind it being optional, I know the vast majority of gamers are drooling morons raised on the likes of CoD and WoW, but for those of us who still have a brain, I very much appreciate the effort to make puzzles a bit more involving.

[Vλgaβoηđ]

I completely forgot about the initial choose your own difficulty pick. I had Puzzles at max, and I guess that bumped the chess game AI's rating too.

I did beat it after several attempts, but does anyone know how high is the bot programmed in terms of elo rating? I will be searching the forums more in case someone knows.

Also, I do agree with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ POV when paying, I was constantly forgetting and/or not seeing several pieces/lanes.

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

Messaggio originale di Vλgaβoηđ:

I completely forgot about the initial choose your own difficulty pick. I had Puzzles at max, and I guess that bumped the chess game AI's rating too.

I did beat it after several attempts, but does anyone know how high is the bot programmed in terms of elo rating? I will be searching the forums more in case someone knows.

Also, I do agree with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ POV when paying, I was constantly forgetting and/or not seeing several pieces/lanes.

magnus carlsen lvl elo. congratz!

[Jiamil]

I do play chess but did not like the chess puzzle. It felt removed from the pacing of the game and did only add frustration rather than an immersive experience. It does look good, I give it that, but all in all I would have enjoyed it not being part of the game.
Took the shortcut and just used a chess AI, not ashamed of it.

[Stargoat]

'Reward being hard to pass on'

Only if you've gone to the forums to ask 'what's the reward for beating chess?'

When I first encountered the puzzle and got an achievement then moved on, I didn't even realise there was an in-game reward. It's a handful of inventory slots. Handy, sure, but it's not going to significantly change the outcome of the game, just means you get to haul an extra weapon (that you probably don't even need) up through Security. Amazing.

[Griever]

I assume most haven't played board games since they were a kid; there's nothing wrong with not knowing how to play something lol. Like the Yakuza games with Shogi and Mahjong, you can use an analyzer like Lichess which uses Stockfish. You don't even have to deal with Japanese and Chinese characters, and most chess tools are in English!

https://lichess.org/editor
Spend a minute setting the board to match System Shock, click analysis board, move your white pieces to match what's shown, move the black piece on lichess to match the AI's move in System Shock, repeat. Takes a minute to do and will probably beat the AI in ~3 moves.

[Katz Chambers]

Chess is just not my game. I know the rules, how to play but I wasn't in the mood so I used a chess bot to beat it. I do like that the game is less interested in holding your hand on figuring stuff out but since I've solved everything else I think i'll try to legit the chess puzzle another playthrough.

[hunne]

well, I admit, I "solved" it with help from the internet...it´s been too long and I usually play way too aggressive

could it be, however, that king and queen are reversed on the ingame board?
at least my internet help and me where heavily confused at first, manually reversed K and Q on the internet board and soon had it solved...twenty moves or so, starting from a fresh board -because...why not.

Anyways, I found it to be quite a nice touch, having to actually "hack" the ingame puzzle from the outside...kind of a fourth wall break here...intended or not.

[aaa a a aa AAA]

fantastic waste of 30 minutes of my time for no result whatsoever
♥♥♥♥ your inventory space and ♥♥♥♥ your achievement

[Pckables]

While I like the chess puzzle in theory, it definitely has some design flaws that cripple its accessibility that could easily be ironed out:

1. Fix the crashes. Currently, the match may reach a state where any move crashes the game. Obvious, but an issue nonetheless.

2. If the player fails the initial checkmate puzzle, it should reset to a different random checkmate puzzle until the player succeeds, rather than resetting the entire board to a full game. Even if someone doesn't play chess, the barrier of entry for a checkmate puzzle is MUCH lower than a full game against a ~1000 ELO bot.

3. Reset the board to a full-game only after a success, as a purely optional fun side-game for those who've actually spent some time playing chess.
As an option: The door opening could be tied to the above, while the achievement could be tied to winning a full game.

4. Possibly a better camera angle for the board? Maybe even a little side-monitor on the platform that shows the board from above.

[DarkMjolnir]

Idk if the chess puzzle is really a puzzle, unless I'm missing something. It's more like a minigame.

There are different kinds of intelligence. The kind of intelligence most utilized in chess is spatial reasoning. I'm pretty solidly below average at spatial reasoning. On easy level probably win less than half of chess matches against an AI. so I used a chess move predictor to win. I don't feel that bad about it because if I wanted to play chess, I'd play a chess game (i own one already).

I actually like the other puzzles as they feel much more within my grasp and i find them challenging nontheless.