Auto Chess is the standalone version of the popular Auto Chess mod in the MOBA Game 'Dota 2'. The mod inspired the whole Auto-Battler sub genre. While the two giants of the MOBA genre 'League of Legends' and Dota 2 got their own Auto-Brawler games with 'Teamfight Tactics' and 'Dota Underlords', was Auto Chess the new standalone game of the original creators of the Auto Chess mod (Drodo Studio). Auto Chess should therefore not be confused with Dota 2 Auto Chess, even though they are very similar.
Auto Chess is the only game of the Auto-Battler genre that got console ports. I am quite unsure why Teamfight Tactics and Dota Underlords never tried this, since these games are from a technical point of view quite simple and could probably run pretty flawlessly even on a Playstation 3 or a Xbox 360. Auto Chess received a PS4 version in December 2020 and a PS5 port in March 2021. Recently both versions shutdown their servers on the first of June 2023. The PC and mobile versions of Auto Chess have on the other hand fortunately remained online. The PC version for the longest time had the same visuals and UI like the console versions, which was a clear visual upgrade from the original mobile version. Sadly Drodo Studio patched the PC version to get the identical visuals and UI of the mobile version, so it would be less work for them to update the game... A very lazy and questionable decision, that I do not support at all. Its like getting a downgrade from the HD-textures of the PC version and the new mobile UI gives you far less information than you previously got with the old PC version. Only the Playstation ports kept the PC/Console visuals and UI, but those are sadly gone now. The PC version of Auto Chess also suffered from the decision to become an Epic Games Store exclusive till late 2022, when the game finally also released on Steam, but that was nearly 3,5 years after the initial PC release. Who know how popular the game would be now, if they have done that in the first place. The mobile version of Auto Chess released first (Mobile release in April 2019, PC release in July 2019) and it is safe to say that it is still seems to be the priority of the developers.
But now lets talk a little bit about what Auto Chess actually is. As the name already suggests Auto Chess is a game, which to a large part plays itself. Nonetheless, Auto Chess also has a lot of strategic and some interactive elements. Players have to choose between different randomly selected units they can summon before every round. They will place the units on a chess board and their units will fight with the units of another player. Players can level up and collect money and items during the matches. Every round they will earn money and XP. The money can be used to either buy Experience Points to level up faster, which allows using more units at the same time, or to purchase different characters to summon. Not all purchased units can be summoned on the chess board at the same time. The amount of usable units depends on the player's level in the match. The characters have different races and classes, which have synergy effects. Using more units of the same class or race makes them stronger. Getting strong synergies is one of the most important aspects in being successful.
3 identical units of the same character can also be combined to a level 2 unit, which is much stronger than a level 1 unit. 3 Level 2 units can be combined to a Level 3 unit, which is quite rare, since you need a bit of luck to get 9 times the same character. Items can be earned during the occasional monster rounds, where players fight against a couple of mobs instead of other contestants. Items can also be combined to form even more powerful items. If you are not happy with your shop selection of 5 purchasable units before every round, you can alternatively also reroll the selection for a small amount of money. This can help get you better synergies or to combine units, but you could also loose a lot of money, while not getting anything useful. Money, which would have perhaps been better spent in level ups. This is one of the many strategic gambles in Auto Chess.
Players can choose the selection and positioning of their units on the chess board before every round. This is pretty much the only connection to Chess, since the characters are not bound to any actual chess rules and will just fight on their own. The players have to make all the strategic decisions before the next round starts. Every round a different opponent of the 8 players in a match will be fought. While you fight a copy of the units of another player, the other player will fight a copy of your units. You could therefore theoretically both win your rounds, even though it doesn't happen too often. Players lose health points by the amount of surviving units they lost to during the battle. Before the next round all defeated units will automatically respawn.
Let's now talk a little bit about the differences to other popular Auto Battler games. Auto Chess is in my opinion the more refined version of Dota 2 Auto Chess and probably truer to the Auto Battle vision of Drodo Studio without the limitations of a mod. You can clearly see that Dota 2 Auto Chess is a mod and bound by the Dota 2 gameplay, while Auto Chess is specifically designed to be an Auto Battler game. Auto Chess therefore has a better UI, that allows you to immediately see the class and race affiliation of every unit. This makes it so much easier to get a split second overview of your synergies and which units to potentially replace and so on. I am still baffled by the fact, that Auto Chess is the only of the games, that does this. For this fact alone I believe that Auto Chess is probably much more new player friendly than the other games. Teamfight Tactics and Dota 2 Auto Chess (admittedly you can't aspect that from a mod) don't even have a tutorial and pretty much require you to learn the units, if you want to make strategic decisions in the short time frame of every round.
For the most part the big Auto-Battler games have a very similar gameplay loop, but Underlords has the twist of the name giving Underlords units and TFT has the character carousel between certain rounds, where players can pick from a bazaar of units. The biggest other differences are the visual styles of each game, but these are obviously a matter of personal preference. Since Auto Chess, Dota 2 Auto Chess and Underlords are all based on the Dota 2 characters, the units of all 3 games look very similar and probably makes it easier to switch between these 3 games without having to learn every character and synergy again.
Auto Chess, Teamfight Tactics and Dota Underlords all 3 have outside of the regular solo modes also an additional quickplay mode and a duo mode, for teams of two players. The quickplay mode is very similar in all 3 games and allows you to start with more units, to combine them with 2 instead of 3 units and to earn more gold per round. It is practically the speedrun version of Solo matches.
The duo modes in the 3 games are on the other hand a little less alike. In Auto Chess there are 4 teams of 2 players, that share the same health points and can send copies of two of their units to their teammates before every round starts. After every round the sent units can be changed to possibly give your teammate even better synergies. In Teamfight Tactics both players also share the same health points, but sending units to your teammates works a bit different here. While in Auto Chess there are always 2 units send to your mate, in TfT players get up to 3 runes of allegiances on different points of the match. They can equip one of their characters with this rune to send it to your teammate. Additionally, if one of the teammates wins his battle first he will temporarily send his remaining units to the board of his teammate till the end of the round. This is a feature not present in Auto Chess. In Dota Underlords there are 8 teams of 2 players and therefore double the amount as in Auto Chess and TFT. Players in Underlords don't only share life points, like in the other games, but also the same Player level. In Auto Chess each player must level on his own. Underlords also calculates the damage differently than Auto Chess and TFT. When one teammate wins and the other loses, the team will only lose the discrepancy of damage. In Auto Chess on the other hand if one player loses a battle, than the team loses the health points regardless if the other player wins and obviously both can lose battles and each get damage. In Underlords you can't send units directly to your teammate, but can instead send units from your shop selection to your teammate.
Auto Chess is the only of the big Auto-Battler games, that aside from Solo, Duo and Quickplay also has a Squad/Team mode. In this mode 2 teams of 4 players battle each other. It is a neat addition and gives a bit of variety to the game. That being said, I personally did enjoy Solo and Duo more. Squad just removes, in my opinion, a bit too much of the tension, that is always present in the other game modes, since you can rely more on your team in the Squad mode.
For the most part the Auto Chess experience on console was the same as in the PC version. There are the previously mentioned visual differences, but apart from that there are also some differences in controls and the boot up times. Booting up the game on the PS5 version took a little less than 5 and a half minutes, while the PS4 version on the PS5 needed around 6 full minutes to reach the main menu. Since the PS5 is using a SSD, there must be something weird going on with the game. These times are completely unacceptable and never got any faster. The PC version on the other hand only takes a few seconds to boot up. Loading times after reaching the main menu are super fast on all versions. The controls with a controller were not as good as with a mouse. While using an analogstick I often overshot objects and had a hard time in being precise. Using the d-pad mitigated this issue a bit, but controls were never as good as in the PC version. I did appreciate the auto assign function of items in his version however, which generally choose the appropriate characters and saved you a bit of time to later on manually reassign things. Otherwise that were actually pretty good console ports, even though I have heard of people complaining about the launch versions a couple of years ago. These issues however seemed to have been fixed.
Result:
For the longest time I looked down on the Auto-Battler genre and believed these games were subpar mobile nonsense, unworthy of the time of a Console and PC Gamer. I am glad I tried out Auto Chess and discovered that I actually was wrong. Auto Battlers are not going to suddenly turn into one of my favourite genres, but I found a new appreciation for them. Auto Chess isn't a pure autoplay game and instead also a strategy game, where players have to carefully consider their synergies, unit and items selections, as well as their money spending strategies. Auto Chess matches therefore always consist of a mix of skill, strategy and randomness. Auto Chess is one of the most new-player friendly games in the genre, but the learning curve will still be very steep in the beginning. Auto Chess isn't flawless, but I would recommend giving the game a try.
7.5/10
