I've never played a game like this, but it's not too complicated…

Has anyone ever played a game where the “Over map” of a turn based JRPG (let's say pixel) is a chess board and the main enemy boss, already established in the prologue takes another province on the map after every JRPG location the player visits?

You can do things within the story to avoid danger like “hiding” or "out maneuvering" special enemies, lets say “knights” or “bishops” these are bosses, . But basically random “SQUARES” in the game are story beats on the map and you're fighting over these locations against the AI BIG BOSS (the King piece) moving one step at a time.

(To be clear, within certain chessboard squares are WHOLE DUNGEONS and QUEST LINES.)

Is this a thing?

Archon doesn't exactly fit the description, but you should take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Dark

This is interesting… more of an action combat route.

Say, how about just an AI final boss that systematically reacts to the player progress?

DreamcityClass said:
Say, how about just an AI final boss that systematically reacts to the player progress?

That would be an improvement over the old classic, sure.

Dragon Force for Saturn

Yggdra Union

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

TacoBell_Lord said:

Dragon Force for Saturn

Yggdra Union

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Thanks for the reply.

How hard is the chess going to be? My understanding is the best chess engines can beat the top level human players now. I can't imagine serious chess players like my dad wanting to play a jrpg, but at the same time, if the chess part is to hard, jrpg players are probably going to give up cause they don't want to read all that chess theory.

@jastiv Hey sorry for the late reply. I just finished upgrading my windows version and reinstalling all my stuff.

• To answer your question. I guess the JRPG-ness would fix gameplay issues. The player would most likely be “the chosen one/ the luckiest farm boy" like most heroes in the genre for single player, and in challenge mode multiplayer would probably be balanced.
• The core demographic would most likely be a Tactics player that wants a classic rule set they understand and easy to introduce to others, e.i. a new demographic.
• This is just a random idea. I have these from time to time, public brain farts. I might work on this “later later” on but I don't have any current plans to develop this concept.