The art in Chants of Sennaar is amazing, hands down. The game is so artistically unique. The strong yellows and reds help the game stand out, but depending on the area the game is not afraid to stray away from its yellow color palette for cooler blues and whites. No issues there.

Obviously a game like this is going to struggle in the story department, and I have to agree that the story is not exactly ground breaking. Smart people made a tower, others came to the tower, height-based hierarchies formed, racism ensued. No one before you has had the ability to translate between the languages, or if they did it was forgotten a long time ago.

Chants of Sennaar relies heavily on the language mechanics and exploration. The issue I have is that the exploration feels far too similar to a traditional point and click adventure. I had hoped that the game would lean heavier on having to use the languages I’ve learned to gain access to new locations. The game shines brightest in its language learning theme, but it relies too heavily on key-door style mechanics to reward the player for learning the intricacies of the varied languages the game has on offer.

Some counterexamples are the higher level translation puzzles that is revealed to the player early on, but are only solvable later in the playthrough. These puzzles are stimulating and engaging. They make me wish the languages were more homogenized throughout the world in order to allow for basic translation to act as a progression mechanic on a smaller scale.

Even worse are the games stealth sections. Mandatory stealth sections are a horse that was beaten to death years ago. The game has mandatory stealth sections, and their inclusion feels silly and awkward.

Is Chants of Sennar good? Yes absolutely. The game clocks in at about 13 hours for me, and it has an absurdly high finish rate of about 55.5% according to steam achievements. Considering most games have a completion rate of about 13% or lower I’d say this game is very worth your time!

If you do play Chants of Sennar, you should turn off achievement notifications because there is an early game spoiler that gets revealed from them *wipes tears from face*.

Buy the game!

Its hard for me to describe how great having a game like this come out is! I used to love these kinds of games as a kid! The Tony hawk games in particular were huge for me. BRC definitely scratches that itch.
Call me a poser but I never actually played the Jet Set games, however I'm a huge fan for the art style and music.

Firstly the music and style sells this game! I can tell you already that this is a game that has made itself timeless by choosing style, style, style. This game is a shining example of games as art in a way that's not devoid of game play (no hate on walking sims tho).

In that way I find it hard to rate the game out of ten, or even honestly tell someone not to play it. The game accomplishes everything it sets out to achieve and I absolutely can recommend the game to anyone interested! It has very few bugs from what I can tell and technically it runs great!

The game design itself however does have lots of small issues that I think are worth nitpicking, but don't color how I recommend the game at all.

I give team reptile a lot of credit for stepping out of their wheelhouse in order to tackle this new endeavor. The teams love for the source material shines through, but this is team Reptiles first time making something that isn't Lethal League, and it feels like it.

Allow me to make a small list of issues I have with the game:

- The game hard focuses on score attack which is weird considering how small your available move-set is.
- The level layouts often lack significant landmarks and thus can be confusing to navigate.
- Each level has a fast travel point, but you need to go to the fast travel point to use it. It is very small, hard to find, and often the levels are so large that even the fast travel point is annoyingly tough to get to.
- The bosses are easily spamable
- The missions can sometimes be poorly explained which makes beating the mission feel like trial and error. Especially when entering a new area.
- Obtaining the map on the phone shows you where the final things in the level are to tag, but only when your phone is open covering 1/4 of the screen.
- In-Level fast travel points have the same model as one-time use secrets, which causes confusion when replaying levels.
- The fast travel problem only seems to get exacerbated by the games "getting over it" level design. Which means if you fall, you have a long way to go. Not bad initially, but replaying levels can be frustrating.

Overall though the story doesn't overstay its welcome and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game!
Can't wait to see their next attempt because I'm sure it will be even better!