3/5 ★ – DarrensTrashBag's review of Chants of Sennaar.

Chants of Sennaar is basically Obra Dinn but instead of figuring out who people are, you figure out calligraphy and translate languages. This is a really cool concept that I am afraid falls short due to heavy reliance on irritating puzzles, slow movement where it becomes awkward to walk towards the camera, and honestly a bland true ending. I feel really bad for not thinking this game is all that incredible. There are some moments that really shine like the world building, actually deciphering languages, the art style and score. The first two hours, I was having a blast. The first language was very satisfying to decipher. Then we get to the fortress, which in terms of a point-and-click-game, it is the worst way to design a level. Lots of backtracking through mile-long staircases and hallways, having to do the stupid box/pot part again and again. Exploration should be easy and quick, especially if it is required to understand all of the clues to decipher the language. For The Garden, I went in feeling toxic after completing the fortress so I wasn't in the best of mindsets. So I had a lot of trouble at first trying to figure out this language. There was some dialogue insuiating that the language was backwards. So I figured that I read right to left like in arabic, which would have been cool. This is not the case and the actual answer was to read it like Yoda. This to me was the worst puzzle in the game. Speaking of the puzzles, they are not really fun. You don't do anything until you have the words you need and then you just do four inputs and you solved the puzzle. The final two levels, the Galleries and Exile, were very great and pulled me back into the game and put me in a good mindset for the finale. But the actual finale where you get ambushed and just put in a VR headset was just dumb. The real ending is that you take off your headset and reach the top with your friends instead of being alone. The ending did not impact me at all unfortunately. Overall I think that maybe if I gave it another shot, I would like it much more. But going into this thinking it was just Obra Dinn again just set me up for disappointment. I really enjoyed the first two hours, hated the next five, then really enjoyed the next three, then hated the last hour. Please, next time someone makes a puzzle game, have your character move faster than a snail. 62/100