[michaelscott]

I think it's fair to call it the pinnacle when talking about the Western world. Both shogi and xiangqi developed from the same base game as chess historically, so I'm not sure how far they venture from the theme compared to something like hnefatafl (which is chess-like but varies considerably in game mechanics when compared with shogi and xiangqi).

[kd5bjo]

Just like Like Go and Poker each have a number of variant rule sets in common use, I mentally group all of these as “chess” based on their common ancestry. I haven’t really studied them enough to know if this is truly justified.