The game doesn't only rely on cooldowns anyway, there are skills that are better against some enemies than against others, there are resistances, there is DT, there are area of effect skills, different projectile speeds, armors, a shitton of tools like traps, specialized grenades, throwing knives and bolts, equipment and components with different very situational strengths and weaknesses, special abilities that should be used only at a certain point in combat and not just when the cooldown is over, debuffs and buffs for each buff and debuff an enemy can come up with and they use buffs/debuffs, oh boy do they use them. And the list goes on.
Stop belittling the game, there is a shitton of systems in that work together to create something bigger than the sum of their parts.
Niektory
about the chess problem:
I guess I'm playing white. h3 is threatened (sacrifice by black to crack open the defense) and then the king would be very vulnerable. Also black bishop to e5 would make it critical. And most of my pieces have shitty mobility.
So I'd do sth about it and sacrifice my pawn on h3 by going g2-g3?
No wait, g2-g4
No wait again, g2-g3, g4 makes everything fall apart.
No wait again again, g4 and then don't take the knight h5-g3 bait but move the rook instead.
Damnit, this is hard. Ok, last word: bishop f3-g4. Pretty obvious, should have thought of that first.
Now I guess we're playing black and are supposed to find the bishop c8xh3 sacrifice though.