5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel

I've long dabbled in Chess. I'm pretty good at Chess as just a person, but not so good compared to actual hobbyists, since it's a bit too plain for me to play regularly. One day, I saw 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel on the Steam store, and I was torn between thinking it might just be the kind of twist needed to make Chess more interesting for me, and thinking that this gimmick surely can't make for reasonable Chess games. Admittedly, I believe I was wrong on both counts.

Calling it 5D Chess might be a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps I didn't get into it enough, but it seemed to only have 4 dimensions. Each piece can move in the usual 2 dimensions on the board, but they can also move backwards in time (according to their usual rules of movement). Now, once a backwards (in time) move happens, a parallel dimension is created with one extra piece that was just moved there, and this opens up the other two dimensions. Generally it's not possible to hop forward in time (because the future has not happened yet), but with parallel dimensions that are in the past, you can combine a dimensional and a temporal move to do just that.
Parallel dimensions are resolved first, making moves until they catch up with the present. Normally this would mean that it's too easy to escape a sticky situation (or stall the game) by just going back in time, but doing so actually creates a disadvantage. You see, each player can only create one active parallel dimension more than their opponent. You only need to checkmate their king on a single board in all the past and present multiverses, and usually that means disallowing them from creating another parallel dimension.

I found the rules actually fairly approachable once I read them instead of jumping into a game as the first thing. It's not the rules that are the problem, it's the insane branching of the state space, and developing any sort of intuitive understanding of it. At least for analysing the present situation, a computer has no problem with two extra dimensions, but I do. But as far as I can tell, the games are reasonably balanced for humans at least, so that's one part where I was wrong.
Sadly, I was also wrong in it making Chess more interesting. Adding a more complex space for the usual boring Chess pieces was not the solution to make it more interesting, at least not for me. I was already failing at adequately analysing the present situation in Chess which annoyed me, and the problem was just amplified here. Instead taking the game in the direction that Chess Evolved Online took it by having more interesting pieces instead was way more up my alley.

So a bit more of a letdown for me than I expected. It still feels like the same old Chess I've always been playing, just more complicated. I will give the developers that it's an impressive feat, adding time travel and alternate universes to Chess and somehow making it make sense. It was worth trying it out just to understand what was going on and go "Oh, cool!", but would I actually recommend it as a game? Probably not, unless analysing Chess in two dimensions is too easy for you, and you always wanted to branch into alternate dimensions rather than thinking more moves ahead.