Chants of Sennaar Review (albertalrisa)
Chants of Sennaar is a charming point-and-click puzzle game focusing on communicating and deciphering language. You started with knowing nothing about the languages. Slowly, you will learn the words by observing and communicating with the people and places around you.
Positives:
+ Unique take on detective/puzzle game.
During the game, you will find several languages to understand. Each language may have its own grammar and rules. For example, one language may repeat a word to convey the amount (e.g. book-book), while another may have a plural marker (e.g. many book). Within the language, some words are related to each other and you can infer that logically as well. Finally, you might also be asked to translate between languages! Solving for those are such a delight.
+ Well-designed checkpoint system for stealth sections.
This game has a lot of stealth sections, which do feels completely separate from the puzzle part. However, if you do fail during the stealth section, most of the time the game will return you to the middle of it instead of having you start over. This makes it easy to do those sections, as failing means only a little setback, especially if you are more fond of the puzzle part than the stealth part.
Neutral:
* The glyph validation system.
The character will draw in their journal of pictures connected to the meaning of the glyph.
This system provides two things: 1. you know that you already found the glyphs (the character, not necessarily the meaning) for those things; and 2. you can get the answer by brute forcing the glyphs.
In my opinion, try to avoid validating the glyphs unless you know for sure the meaning of the glyph as it takes a lot of the fun when you rely on it to get the meaning of the glyph.
Negatives:
- A lot of waiting for the character to walk around
The environment in Chants of Sennaar are huge and grand. While great and immersive when you got to see them for the first time, this game requires a lot of backtracking. Since you are learning the languages while going through the levels, there are a lot of moments where you need to go back and get more information in the prior section with your newfound knowledge. This means a lot of walking and a lot of waiting.
- Weak later parts of the game
The later parts of the game are a bit weak compared to the rest of the game. In those sections, it's a lot easier to validate your glyphs even without you guessing them yourselves. This is a bit of a shame since one of the later languages shows how concepts could be merged into a new glyphs.
Overall, I do recommend Chants of Sennaar for those who like puzzle/detective-style game who seek something unique from the genre.