I agree with you and I think the lesson to bear in mind is that we should aim for such things in future games. For example my probably only criticism to gross chess is the unchanged knight. You said once that that makes it more a defense piece because otherwise you lose turns in order to get the knight to go offensive. But nothing is exchangeable for knight, as the vao is likely weaker (this could not be true in the opening though). I tend to think natural knights for 12x12 could be LT (camel-treaper which is colourbound but has a nice distribution of destinations), ZH (zebra-threeleaper), CH (camel-treeleaper) and ZT (zebratreaper). The need 4 moves to exit the board starting in the oposite edge which makes them relatively "as" fast, but they are a bit more awkward to use. They are probably a bit stronger than 12x12 bishops as per increased forking power. Also they work differently with pawn chains. So maybe to get the chess feel you should allow pawns to always be able to go 2 squares to either move or capture with keeping en passant always :)!
@Fergus
I agree with you and I think the lesson to bear in mind is that we should aim for such things in future games. For example my probably only criticism to gross chess is the unchanged knight. You said once that that makes it more a defense piece because otherwise you lose turns in order to get the knight to go offensive. But nothing is exchangeable for knight, as the vao is likely weaker (this could not be true in the opening though). I tend to think natural knights for 12x12 could be LT (camel-treaper which is colourbound but has a nice distribution of destinations), ZH (zebra-threeleaper), CH (camel-treeleaper) and ZT (zebratreaper). The need 4 moves to exit the board starting in the oposite edge which makes them relatively "as" fast, but they are a bit more awkward to use. They are probably a bit stronger than 12x12 bishops as per increased forking power. Also they work differently with pawn chains. So maybe to get the chess feel you should allow pawns to always be able to go 2 squares to either move or capture with keeping en passant always :)!