Chants of Sennaar Review - 2023's Game of the Year
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- Опубліковано 26 лип 2024
- Hey, this is my Chants of Sennaar review - an excellent adventure-puzzle game about translating fictional hieroglyphic languages! Chants of Sennaar is a genuinely excellent game, one of the best releases of recent years and my game of 2023 so far.
I hope you enjoy the video!
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#table53 #chantsofsennaar #puzzlegame #indiegames #languages
00:00 - Introduction
00:36 - The fictional language
03:49 - Aesthetics and design
05:07 - Heaven's Vault
06:00 - Conclusion - Ігри
Obviously I couldn't talk about this without mentioning Heaven's Vault at least a little..
I downloaded Heaven's vault after playing CoS, thinking it was the same, but I wasn't so happy with it so I returned it. The beginning is just... not well made in that game. Too much guessing without any sort of information, talking with unclear purpose, the controls feel clunky (I accidentally left Maersi by one misclick and couldn't go back) and the sailing feels annoying. If the language thing had hooked me from the beginning, I might've powered through those other things, but it just seemed so randomly thrown together that I couldn't get into it. (also I felt an instant dislike to the protagonist).
Where CoS has taken care to be extra user friendly in its core design, HV seemed to be the opposite. I really wanted to like it... can you tell me, when does it become good?
@yasmeleon It sounds like you played HV expecting it to be a very different game to what it is. Chants of Sennaar is explicitly a puzzle game, Heaven's Vault is interactive fiction. The "guesses" shouldn't feel like guesses, they're more like choices and the entire game is you choosing how to act and being part of a highly detailed and player driven story!
It could be that you just don't like that sort of game, which is fair, but for me it was good from the very first moments!
@@Table53 I think that might be it... I prefer puzzle games, or at least games with a clear objective for sure. But it was also the UI and controls that felt meh. But I think I'd have looked past that if the rest had hooked me from the beginning.
TABLE 53 HAS RETURNED TO USSSSS
on the first light of the fifth day, at dawn look to the ~~east~~ Chants of Senaar video
Neat game. Not my cup of tea, but your recommendations are so highly regarded that I'm still tempted to check it out.
Nice to see a video from you again!
Thats fair, not everyone will have the same tastes! Although there is a demo if you do get curious
Thanks! :)
I only found your channel recently but happy that you're still active :) it seems like you have a similar puzzle game taste as me lol. would like to see more recommendation videos :)
Thank you! There will definitely be more, but fairly sporadically as it always has been with this channel haha. I'm not a very good "UA-camr" 😅
The king returns!!
This really seems like an intriguing game! I tend to wishlist most games you review, so thank you for another to get excited for!
Haha, I hope you enjoy it!
Great video! This game reminds me a lot of Tunic, one of my favorite games from 2022
Tunic was great! And I say that despite not particularly enjoying the Souls-like combat, the world and "puzzle" designwas just so good!
I missed these videos!!
Many recommendations mean i'm going to need to play this game for sure!...
I think you'll really enjoy it!
Yo glad to see you back! I really like the shader and colors used in this game, really pleasing to look at!
I think it's such a nice visual style for gameplay too
Looks fun! I love a thematic puzzle game, I’ll give it a go this weekend
Also I played a bunch of Wildermyth this summer based on your recommendation and I loved it 😍
It's so good. I'm glad you enjoyed Wildermyth!
So hyped to play this next time I get money. I adored Heaven's Vault and would love to see a different take on a language translation game.
P.S. Have you read the 2-volume Heaven's Vault novel? It's REALLY good and ends up pretty different from the game's story.
I hope you enjoy it!
Yes I actually have! Really enjoyed them
It's been 36 years😭 Glad you're back from ze dead Table
Most consistent youtuber on the platform 😅
This Game looks nice. Great video
Thanks!
I ragequitted its demo and went back playing another run of Heavens Vault ^^ but that's cuz i expected a linguistic game, and got instead tons of puzzles
I don't think Chants of Sennaar pretends that it isn't a puzzle game! The language of Heaven's Vault is grander in scope for sure, but also has some similar puzzley elements
@@Table53 Actually, I think it does! In the description there's no word about being a puzzle game, it only talks about deciphering languages. In the last paragraph they mention puzzles, but only as 1 of 4 important parts of the game.
(In fact, Heavens Vault has not a single puzzle, at least i found none in 3 full playthroughs)
Ah okay, I take it back somewhat! I don't think I was ever under the impression that it was anything but a thematic puzzle game - but possibly that was just how I interpreted the screenshots!
I would say that every instance of language deciphering is a type of puzzle!
for me it was the opposite... HV's beginning was just too much blah blah, clunky sailing, infodump and guessing without context that I couldn't even get to the real language part before 'rage'quitting.
In CoS I felt that knowing and learning the languages actually fulfilled a purpose, namely being able to use them to get ahead and get all the necessary info so you can solve the puzzles.
@@yasmeleon looks like i belong to a small group of historians/linguists and hobbylinguists who neither likes puzzles nor adventures, some of them don't even like games per sé, but play Heaven's Vault purely to discover and deceipher HVs intricate, hundreds words big language. It's sad that it uses english grammar, but at least it doesn't tell you which symbols mean which wordgroup. Also HV is a great and immersive representation of archaelogists, and in its gameplay it reminds a lot of CYOA/old gamebooks.
Chants of Senaar looks similiar on the first glance, but none of the languages used there have more than a few dozen words, and it automatically confirms words very fast, without giving an in-world explanation for it, i hated that "magical book". The whole game is very gamey (one example for this is that it has stealth parts, just for the sake of it)
tl;dr HV can be played as a pure linguistics game, CoS is hard/impossible/uninteresting to do this.
I'm aware that most gamers aren't hobbylinguistics and just see figuring the language out in HV as a puzzle - for them CoS is fine