Chess Ultra [VR]

Chess Ultra is Ripstone's attempt to give the oldest strategy game in the canon a graphical overhaul and modern platform support, including full VR compatibility. At its core it is a chess client: you get boards, pieces, AI opponents at various difficulty tiers, and online play. The VR mode is the genuine headline here, letting you sit across a beautifully rendered table from your opponent as though you are actually leaning over a physical board. For anyone who owns a PC-compatible headset, that alone is a compelling reason to fire it up at least once. From a strategy depth perspective, the AI is the thing that matters most in a chess program, and Chess Ultra ships with what Ripstone calls Grandmaster-approved engine tuning. In practice that means the lower difficulty brackets are approachable enough for casual players, while the upper tiers will punish anyone who has not done their opening theory homework. There is no adaptive difficulty that quietly cheats on your behalf, which I appreciate. What you see is what you get. The AI will not blunder a rook because it decided to be nice to you. The downside is that the top-end AI, while strong, is not competitive with dedicated engines like Stockfish, so very advanced players will hit a ceiling relatively quickly. The presentation does real work here. The 4K environments and piece designs are genuinely attractive, and switching between board themes gives the game a small but meaningful amount of variety. The tutorial is adequate for complete newcomers: it covers rules and basic tactics without being condescending. That said, it stops well short of anything resembling opening theory or endgame study, so if you arrived hoping for a structured learning path comparable to Lichess or Chess.com, you will be disappointed. Chess Ultra is a playing environment, not a coaching platform. The lack of built-in post-game analysis or move evaluation is the most obvious gap for anyone who takes improvement seriously. The Mixed review score on Steam largely reflects two camps: players who wanted more features for the price and VR enthusiasts who found exactly what they were looking for. There is no mod ecosystem to speak of, no puzzle libraries, no correspondence mode at launch, and the online player pool is thin enough that finding a live human opponent outside of peak hours can take patience. For a game with Strategy in its genre tags, the decision-making depth is entirely imported from chess itself rather than from any systems Ripstone built on top of the game. That is not necessarily a flaw, but it means Chess Ultra succeeds or fails on the quality of its client, not on any original design contribution. Who is this actually for? Casual players who want a visually impressive way to play chess against a friend on the couch, VR owners who want to tick off a unique showpiece experience, and parents looking for something to put in front of a chess-curious kid. Competitive players who study seriously will outgrow the tools quickly and are better served by free web platforms. Treat it as a premium board experience rather than a training suite, and your expectations will land in the right place. Diego, Scout Team