Well, it would appear that there are not many people reading this forum or playing the game.  I couldn't find anyone online to play last night.  

Hopefully the developers will stop by these forums.  If so, I just want to point to a write-up I've made of my first impressions which include some suggestions for improvement:

My Shotest Shogi XBLA Impressions

My main problem is that the tutorial is crap.  I have been stuck forever and it keeps saying not the right move try again.

Oh, my goodness.  Somebody else posted in the forum.

Anyway, I can see where that would be frustrating.  Perhaps they should give more hints or just allow you to skip past it after a certain number of failures.

Hey, the tutorial drove me batty at times too -- until I realized that some of the correct solutions on some problems call for you to -not- promote a piece in the promotion zone (hit 'B' to refuse promotion) -- and then everything made sense. Turns out (and I'm a total beginner, learning shogi via this game) that knowing -when- to promote is a big deal strategically.

A solid review on your blog, though I would suggest that your concerns about screen space, zooming, and tutorial text covering coordinates are all solved by the right stick. Up and down change angle of view, left and right change the zoom. I tend to zoom out a bit during the tutorials so I can see the coordinates, and zoom in quite a bit during play to enjoy the look of the board/pieces filling the screen.

As requested, developer dropping by.  :)

Thanks for your support guys. As you've noticed, whilst the game's doing very well in Japan we're kinda struggling back home a bit. We're talking with MS about what we can do to get some more exposure over here.

A game like Shogi's never going to have a massive userbase, but it would be nice to get *some* westerners playing!

 

Great to hear from you, Rubic0wn!

This game is fun and I really like learning new things. But I keep getting destroyed so far. Hahah, but im not giving up. Warp I will send you a friend request we shall have some matches. Even though im awful lol

Omg I finally won a match. Lol. I had to take everyone of his pieces and still took about 10 moves to stop his king from moving anywhere. But still I love this game.

OMG this is one of my favorite games
ive  been wanting to learn this game for a few years now just hadnt had any information about it or anywhere i could buy it or anyone to play with lolz

the tutorials were ok i havent really had much use for the castle formations yet, as the AI seems to fall with out it

what i didnt like was how the AI would take ages and i mean ages specially for AI to a single move speacially once you start hitting 1800 and as for kairi i fall asleep after a while takes so long to make a move and then get slaughtered cause i foget my game plan lmao

where was i hmmm oh yeah shogi players add me lolz
i have no friendz LMAO
how sad hahahaha

I am also learning to play Shogi and would like to play real people. Add me so we can play. :) Tutorials are fine although I am getting more out of Hidetchi's tutorials in Youtube atm.

What I do find lacking in this game is the utter lack of DLC. I mean, I would love the ability to save replays for future study at the very least....

Just fought Alex on Practice Mode and 200 moves and I still lost. Getting better though... he used to slaughter me. hehe

 Furisode wrote:

Just fought Alex on Practice Mode and 200 moves and I still lost. Getting better though... he used to slaughter me. hehe

Alex beats me, yet I've actually won matches online on brainking.com which is a turn-based server.  There's something fundamentally wrong with the AI...either they're way too good or their flaws are too subtle. Or maybe it's just that I don't enjoy playing the AI as much and don't think things through.  

I don't know if the AI is fine since all I fought against is Alex to see if opponents get progressively difficult... but Alex's description is pretty misleading. He is a pretty random player as far as strategies is concerned but I still feel he is too strong. I kinda feel that the Alex should be what you expect an Amature 10th Kyu rank player to play as... or something like that for a "fresh young player".

That being said, I do not mind the difficulty. If anything, it makes me curious just how different the other opponents are. However, I feel that it may scare off potential Shogi players from the game, especially here in the US.

The problem i have is when you get to opponents like Robot, who are like flawless. And the online is a wasteland.

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Microsoft stole my points, all 3000 of them....

Oh and a 2d view would be nice, specially when you're playing on a small screen

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Microsoft stole my points, all 3000 of them....