head to head
Neither is simply harder - they are hard in different places. Chants of Sennaar demands more variance; Portal 2 demands more execution.

Optimization · Pure Optimization
A linguistic deduction game where each tower language must be decoded through patient observation and hypothesis.

Optimization · Pure Optimization
A first-person puzzle game where seeing the solution is the whole skill.
Chants of Sennaar leans Optimization (Pure Optimization); Portal 2 leans Optimization (Pure Optimization).
Portal 2 leans clearly harder on execution.
Chants of Sennaar
Stealth sections require basic patience not twitch reflexes
Portal 2
Portal placement requires some precision but timing is lenient.
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Chants of Sennaar
Tower inhabitants follow scripted roles with no adaptive AI
Portal 2
No opponent; puzzles are static.
Chants of Sennaar leans clearly harder on variance.
Chants of Sennaar
Hidden glyph meanings require exploration to uncover
Portal 2
Puzzles are deterministic with no randomness.
Same score on optimization - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Chants of Sennaar
Deciphering each language layer is a systematic closed deduction problem
Portal 2
Solving the puzzle's logic IS the entire game.
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.