Previews

Might & Magic: Chess Royale Early Access preview - The best auto chess yet?

This might be the best auto chess game on mobile

Might & Magic: Chess Royale Early Access preview - The best auto chess yet?

The mobile market is certainly no stranger to the auto-chess phenomenon. Or, auto battler, as they are sometimes referred to now. We've got Dota Underlords, Auto Chess (cheeky name, frankly), and we're due to eventually have Teamfight Tactics, in addition to more I'm sure I'm forgetting. The genre is huge right now, and that's because it's incredibly approachable and very fun, but that also means standing out in the genre is difficult.

This is exactly the situation that Might and Magic: Chess Royale finds itself in. It is launching into a genre with plenty of relevant entries, on a platform with enough competition to threaten any game. And yet, Might and Magic is doing something a little different, and that's not just an emphasis on the recent battle royale craze. Might and Magic: Chess Royale changes enough small things about the auto chess genre to make it one of the best entries in the genre, if not the best.

Checkers

The beauty of auto chess is its simplicity, and this game doesn't change the basic formula up too much. Each round you get gold, which can be spent on units, experience, or a few buffs. You'll want to fill your field up with strong, cooperative units at the start of the round, and then in the following phase, you will do battle with one of 99 other players, bringing the player count up to 100 total. That's the battle royale influence, though honestly in this genre of game, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

The only difference brought to the table thanks to the battle royale nature of the game is that you won't be able to predict what enemy units you'll be up against. Play against the same player enough times in Dota Underlords, and you'll start being able to forge a counter pick team and see what strategies they're thinking through. Here, meanwhile, you are incredibly unlikely to ever see the same player twice, meaning there is more benefit to building a team that is equipped to deal with almost any task, instead of individual counters.

You can also only lose three rounds before being kicked out of the game. This sees players drop like flies in the early sections of the game, and you'll have to be careful to not fall like the rest of them. This means the game is also much more quickly over and done with than in other auto chess games, as you can easily finish an entire game in less than twenty minutes, while the equivalent in Dota Underlords just might take an hour in length. What this means is that with Might and Magic: Chess Royale, it's much easier to fit in a game in your free time, and not have to worry about how long you'll be glued to the screen for.

Checkmate

Other than that, this is a very similar experience in many ways. You'll be building up your teams, as usual, having complimentary units on the field will offer bonuses, and you'll be buying many multiples of the same unit in order to raise their star ranking, and make them much more potent in battle.

If a criticism is to be leveled at the game thanks to this brisker nature, it's that you don't need to worry about higher-powered units as much. As the game goes on, more powerful base units, which are also more expensive, are available in the shop, but you are unlikely to be playing the game long enough to ever have those units at a two-star ranking, or even three-star. Because of that, it feels more worthwhile to stick with whatever team you start with, and just continually upgrade them over and over.

This removes a degree of tactics from the game, the risk-reward of spending your hard-earned gold too early, but as of right now, it feels like a worthy sacrifice. It would be perhaps more interesting if the final ten players got a small health boost in the final stretch of the game, something to make things a bit more intense, but even without that, this might be one of the more fun and approachable auto chess games on the market right now. Well worth looking out for at the end of this month.

Dave Aubrey
Dave Aubrey
Dave is the Guides Editor at Pocket Gamer. Specialises in Nintendo, complains about them for a living.