The effects are very over-the-top, and makes playing the game quite satisfying. There are special effects for various types of moves, such as moving your pieces into certain special formations.

In the Casual ranked mode, there's an AI hint system that gives you suggestions on what moves to make. However, sometimes these moves can end up being quite fatal, especially when you don't understand why the move is being suggested.

As far as learning resources go, this game doesn't offer much. There's a simple tutorial that gets the job done, and there's a fun puzzle mode that gives you mate-in-one or mate-in-three puzzles. But if you want to learn shogi theory, Kiou doesn't offer any way to do so.

The gacha system seems like quite an afterthought, as there doesn't seem to be any way of getting free pulls at the moment.

It's finally here!
This is the Shogi equivalent of Mahjong Soul, and to be honest Shogi definitely needs games like these to get a chance to grow in popularity.
The tl;dr of this review is that it's a flashy Shogi client with cute characters and over the top animations, but most importantly fast matchmaking

*Why you should play Shogi?*
Shogi is, as I often jokingly say, "chess if it was good". You'll find that it shares a lot of pieces and have the same goal of checkmating a king.
However, while in chess the position tends to simplify itself over time (as pieces gets exchanged, the amount of moves you can do decreases); in shogi the position complexifies itself over time (due to the drop rule, when pieces are captured it adds new possible moves on the board). Coupled with the pieces having less overall movement, to me shogi feels like each move is much more commital while being a much more "freeform" type of game.
If you don't know how to play shogi, before playing in this shogi client, I would highly recommend you to go through the interactive tutorial on Lishogi (in general, Lishogi is great to come back to for matches analysis and puzzles anyway).

*Why play this Shogi client rather than others?*
Because it currently, at this time of release, is the most accessible platform if you want to matchmake quickly. If this game do manage to grow and have a stable playerbase, it have a chance to be a big thing.
Your other main options are: Lishogi, 81dojo, and Shogi Wars
Unfortunately Lishogi is completely have no players despite being the most feature-rich platform; 81dojo have some players but it's slow matchmaking and the platform feels extremely ancient (it also allows you to do illegal moves which results in auto lose); Shogi Wars have fast matchmaking but have no "grace timer" once you are out of time + you need to pay if you want to play more than 3 matches a day.
This Shogi client also have a better phone app than the other options.
Besides that, it also looks really nice due to the ton of eye-candy (anime characters, shogi techniques being called with animations, pieces flippinf around when moving, dynamic backgrounds, ...)

*Gacha, monetization, and casual modes*
This client have few things to be aware of:
- characters and customization are locked behind a very aggressive gacha and monetization; if you are here for the shogi it should not matter much
- matches analysis seems to be tied to some subscription system, not super necessary if you play half casually (or if there's a way to export the games to other places? no clue if actually can or not)
- there is a non serious mode that have an AI telling you moves suggestion, in my opinion you should avoid playing that

Anyway, Shogi is love