Might & Magic Chess Royale Is Out, And It's Pretty Much What You'd Expect

Well, here it is. Yet another auto chess game. It’s called Might & Magic Chess Royale, which sounds even worse than the others. You thought DOTA Underlords and Teamfight Tactics were dumb names? Boy, how wrong you were. The biggest draws here are that it’s free, like all the competing titles, and that it promises games that end in about 10 minutes. That later part is something the other contenders can only dream about, so this one might end up being the right choice for busy people. I guess?

I’ve played two matches for the sake of this article, and there’s a caveat you should know about. The matches end in under 10 minutes only if you’re bad and/or unfortunate. If you plan on ending up in the top 5, you’ll need to set aside 15-20 minutes of your time, which is (if my math is correct) between 50 and 100% more than what it says on the box. Naughty whoever put together the marketing copy.

Apart from that, it’s auto chess alright. Except this time it’s the boring, generic high fantasy creatures from modern Might & Magic games (the bland ones) instead of the boring, generic high fantasy creatures from Warcraft 3. You buy units between turns, arrange them on the battlefield, stack them to make the numbers go up, and pair them in such a way that you get as many synergies as possible.

There are some novelties, although I can only think of one – I use the plural form in case there’s another somewhere than I’m missing – spells. There’s a daily rotation of spells which can be bought and activated at certain stages of the match. They all cost coin, but provide you with various benefits like glowing rocks falling onto enemies, more money, taunting, etc.