Shogi Demon - Japanese Chess 4+

I really enjoy the app. It has many helpful features and also a good and quick support!

This is actually a nice app on first glance. It has both traditional and modern visualization for the shogi pieces, as well as symbolic pieces that tell the movement of shogi pieces. nevertheless, the app hangs or crashes frequently, which makes it a bad overall experience.

This is one of the very few shogi programs available in my Mac Store so I bought it, especially since somebody on the net said it is too strong for him. I was thoroughly disappointed:

First, the program does not play simple josekis correctly and does not give hints so for a beginner it will be hard to improve.
Second, you can change the settings for time and byoyomi, but they get simply ignored. Open any of the preferences or property panels during play and the program crashes immediately on an up-to-date Mac OS.

So you can only play on unlimited time level. On the highest (strongest) level, the program gets *really* slow (I have to wait for several minutes for a single move on a MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM) without playing any better. I used to be a 1-kyu, but I haven´t played for 15 years (even the pieces looked somewhat unfamiliar when I restarted last week), but it is still not a challenge and it does not hold a candle to free programs like gnushogi or even Entry Shogi on my iphone. So unless you are a complete beginner, you will not face a challenge. If you are able to tell a Ranging Rook position from a Static Rook position and know what a climbing Silver is, look elsewhere for a shogi program (and please tell me when you have found one).

On the positive side, you can use it to set up positions and solve tsume and it has nice graphics so the one star is deserved.