Sifu

A game that has a laser focus in delivering to you the ultimate kungfu power fantasy - should you actually take the time to learn and master the game's combat system.

Super tight, insanely repayable, free additional content (Arenas) added to test yourself with some cool set pieces.

Granted the environments and areas could be just a tad bit more varied but everything felt well constructed and serving a purpose. And there are definitely some cool set pieces, The Museum is a definite highlight.

There are some annoyances though like the camera. I'm usually able to move the camera around while I'm fighting (but that's because I've played the crap out of this game so I can afford to wrestle with the camera mid-combat) but even then if I'm backed into a corner, I can't fight the camera AND the enemies at the same time.

Some gold achievements in the arena require to do things in a very specific way or spam a certain tactic that almost feels like "cheesing your way to gold".

The other annoying thing is the red background in the dojo, which strains the crap out of my eye if I stay there for too long.

Overall, a definite indie highlight of 2022.

I have spent many years trying to find an Ip Man simulator. I don't want a game where you go on the offensive. I want the game where trouble comes to me. I am going to sit there, one hundred dudes will do their best to punch me, they will fail, and I will make them all look silly in the process. I don't want some two-button auto-fighting combat system, I want to feel like I'm doing something.

Sifu mostly delivers! I played Absolver, I played the Arkham games, I played Sleeping Dogs, I played Overgrowth, I played Yakuza. Sifu's probably the closest it comes to being Donnie Yen. So it probably makes sense that at any point during Sifu, I probably would tell you that I'm having a fucking blast in that moment. But! I want a little more. I want more game, of course, but what I really mean is that I feel like a lot of Sifu is either undercooked or underutilized.

There are some cool scenes! If you've heard anything about the game, you've heard about the Oldboy hallway. The museum is probably my favorite area in the game between the big ink pendulum thing and the way it plays with your vision on the way to the boss. But the environment mostly feels like it's there because they need something that doesn't look like you're running through a level blockout. When they want you to play with the environments it's some of the most fun you'll have with the game - the museum exhibits, all the clutter in the high-rise level, the parts of the nightclub where you're allowed to interact with objects. The game really wants you to only use weapons when they deem fit though, judging by the barren combat corridors that exist all throughout the game. Some of these encounters would be a little more interesting if I could be more inventive with how I use my environment outside of a couple rooms.

Weapons are a little weird and I wish they found a better balance with them? They can be fun when the enemies pose a threat and you're actually forced to use them wisely, but I only really feel like these are used to full effect against bosses - catching kunai that a boss is throwing at you and airmailing it back to its original sender is as satisfying as an entire fight all on its own, but more often you are either given one or zero weapons when fighting a boss. Sure, that's fine, design decision, that's cool. But it's weird that it comes immediately after a level where I had a bat in my hand the entire time because almost every enemy in the level had a bat or knife, and I could replace my weapon 4 times over before the first one would've broken.

I also feel like the upgrades are missing something. I probably only used 30% of the upgrades in the game intentionally, and that includes both the statue upgrades and the skill... totem pole? It feels like the developers want to extend a hand to you and offer you the chance to make incremental, permanent progress, but these upgrades feel mostly meaningless. There are a couple moves/combos you can use to cheese your way through a boss but there's no real reason to do so if you want Sifu's combat to retain its charm.

Bosses are Sifu's biggest strength. They feel like this is what the game was meant to be about, which is why it's so weird that there's only five of them. The lead-up to each boss plays with the environment, and four of the five encounters are actual, real skill checks. Each of them will slap the soul out of you if you don't understand the skill they're testing. It's effective teaching, and each boss makes you better at the game overall when you need to go back to previous levels and beat them at a younger age. I do think the game would benefit from having more difficulty options, because the bosses seem to assume that you've played the way I did and only do the bare minimum until the game tests you on a skill - button mashing until the game demands you actually defend, blocking until the game insists that you learn how to dodge, etc. People who mastered these early (or learn quickly) are going to cruise through the game much faster. It really leaves me wishing that there were more bosses that tested you on multiple things at once, or forced you to adapt a bit more. No boss tests your positioning against multiple enemies, none have any real mixups. If any Sifu DLC ever gets released, I hope that it includes some endgame bosses that really, truly test the player who's able to make it to the end.

Lastly, I don't want to undersell the fights against standard, non-boss enemies. The fights against crowds are mostly a joke to begin with - it's what allows that Oldboy reference to actually resemble the movie - but they become a genuine thrill as special enemies are mixed in. Unlike the Arkham games, where special enemies are more of a nuisance than anything ("spam dodge until you get a chance to press The One Button That Kills This Kind of Guy"), special enemies in Sifu feel like a welcome challenge. They apply additional - but not overwhelming - pressure to the player, forcing you to change the way you defend to create new opportunities to attack while still keeping up with the rest of the mob. I enjoy doing the entire museum level all over again (despite having the shortcut) just so I can do the last chunk before the boss where they confine you to a small area while mixing in a bunch of dancers and grapplers.

There's a lot to like here, but I wish the environments and enemies were more alive OR more varied. Its gameplay scratches an itch for me that Absolver never did, being a little bit faster with a lower skill floor (while still making progress towards the skill ceiling feel meaningful and exciting). I really hope Sloclap decides to do more with this system, no matter what form it takes.

Sifu feels like the full modernization of the style that should have appeared after the 16 bit era, instead of just dying entirely. With some of the most satisfying moment-to-moment combat I’ve ever experienced, Sifu is all about timing dodges and parries between stringing together lethal melee combos to knock down the gauntlet of kung fu attackers surrounding you. What’s more special is the unique take on a life system here – You die, you burn a year and you come back older and stronger until eventually you’re too old and get a game over, and this system has narrative purpose too! Perfection is the essence of Sifu and it’s all because of this novel take on lives. At its barest, it’s just a 5-stage brawler with a lives system – but the twists it employs make it more narratively and mechanically interesting than anything else in the genre.

Sifu is a combat focused martial arts game, which tells a simplistic tale about revenge and has small roguelite elements (but not enough to consider it one imo).

Like i mentioned, the story is really simple, as it sees you get your revenge against the 5 people who murdered your family and attempted to do so to yourself, only being saved by the amulet that brough you back to life. The story is really very simple, with a lot of its moments of reflection being small wordless cutscenes. Really the biggest interactions are during the boss fights, which are used effectively to show a bit more of their personality. Elsewhere more of the story can be uncovered in the collectibles found throughout the game, where you can piece the "mystery" of what happened and why it happened. Its simple, elegant and effective, just about what i want from such a combat focused game.

Visually the game is great, employing a simple animated artstyle, that makes reacting to enemy attacks much easier because of the higher contrast. The same could be said about the animation quality, hits feel impactful, even defensive parries. This is so important in this game in particularly, and goes a big way in making the combat feel as satisfying as it does.

Combat is a mix between batman arkham/assassin creed/sleeping dogs brand of combat and Sekiro. The influence of the first is easily seen in the "magnetic" attacks that sees the character leap forward big distances in order to hit the enemies, and attack them even if facing backwards. The Sekiro influence comes in the form of the "posture" system in use, here called structure, in which both the player and enemy have a limit on how much they can guard before it breaks, leaving them open for harsh punishment. The game also has a strong focus on active defensive gameplay, meaning that because of the structure system the game highly incentivises the use of dodges and parries to get a survival chance, particularly against bosses..

At the beginning of the game i was pretty disappointed at how defensive focus the game is, you really cant attack to much against groups of enemies as you will soon be blocked and the rest will unload on you. You open up enemies through active defense and then you take them out, either through brute force or takedowns, the latter which heal you and give full invulnerability. Once you adapt to what the game is trying to do the experience is really much better, you start to learn enemies movesets and counter them perfectly, you learn to use the environment to your advantage (weapons, falls, objects you can throw), and you prioritize certain enemy types. The boss fights end up being the highlights given how they make you show what you have learned, the second boss in particular is a big roadblock for a lot of people, myself included, as it really forces you to learn how to dodge/parry, and effectively play the game like its intended. There really only is a good way to play it, but its incredibly fun, so i think they did a good choice in forcing the player down this experience.

Level design is linear, but you can unlock shortcuts to make future playthroughs of the 5 levels much quicker. Its fun to lookout for collectibles and explore all that is to see in each level. They start off banal, and fall deeper into symbolism and surrealism as you advance, the boss fight being the epitome of this (each as a first more normal phase, and a second harder and more abstract phase). There is a great amount of different environments and enemy compositions to keep things interesting, a must since you will be repeating each stage quite a few times. Depending on the route you can find shrines, which are effectively one time use upgrade stations, and the route you take is very dependent on how many of these you want to find.

You earn xp per playthrough that is lost on game over, you can use to unlock moves for the run, which can become permanent if you buy them 5 times. Its an awkward compromise between roguelite and more traditional design, and at the end of the day only a few of the upgrades are really good and worth investing in, so it doesnt impact the enjoyability too much. Another essential aspect of the game is the death mechanic, which is a genius design that ties the narrative to the gameplay, and essencially gives this hard game a lot of second tries to its players. You age 1+ years each time you want to revive after a death, whose counter keeps increasing with each death, and reduces by killing certain minibosses in levels. By ageing you increase your damage and decrease your health as you pass each decade, and its gameover once you die over 70 years old. This is a great mechanic as a comeback factor in boss fights, as the extra damge is usually more important than the extra health, if you learn to defend well, which is what the game is forcing you to do.

Its biggest issue is really the camera, that can be very finnicky whenever pillars or walls are involved, which is really a struggle in certain rooms. You end up going to the big open areas because of how frustrating it can get, which is also the best way to handle mobs of enemies.

Sifu is a great game for sure, that boosts a lot of innovative mechanics to guide the player through its hard, but very rewarding and satisfying combat systems. Its very much worth playing to anyone who enjoys combat focused games.

It took me 14hrs to completely beat this game and it was worth spending all that time in this game. It was hard playing in the first run complete run (bad end run) but as time goes the better you understand the enemies. Most of my time was used on optimizing the age so I can go as low as possible for the next boss.

The game mechanics are amazing. The Age stacking and shrine resetting made the game feel unforgiving but that's what makes it hard if you suck at the game. To do a proper parry is so hard as it has a very small time frame but when you do perfectly hit it, it feels amazing. Weaving is perfect, it gives you i-frames but only enough i-frames to dodge one attack from a string. (CMIIW on this one) You can only spam it on very specific moves. The only thing I didn't like is unlocking moves in XP, some moves was very fun to use but it costs a lot of XP but its also understandable (Example being environmental mastery)

The plot is very standard, it isn't something new but the game manages to send a message that you shouldn't be blinded by "bloodlust" because there are enemies that won't attack you unless you attack them. Greatest example being in The Club before going to the trials you have people just working out and training, you can just go to the door and choose 1.

The mobs were fun to fight. The hardest mobs were the ones before the boss battle and those that turns super saiyan in a group fight and just gets buffs to health and structure. They are pretty balanced I'd say because their moves are linear having only like 2 sets of strings at most.

All the boss were fun except for the 4th boss. The 4th boss was pretty easy as I defeated her in the 2nd try with no deaths (my first try was me at 70), maybe its me getting better at the game but her moveset was very predictable, her 2nd phase didn't made her harder because her 2nd phase string was very identical to her 1st phase string.

I think the only thing I dislike about this game is the camera (I'm using mouse and KB maybe that's why) because there would be times where you get to a wall or a corner and the camera sucks at those moments. Also very few times it happened to me where after a boss cutscene the the camera was pointing at the very top or somewhere else so be aware of that.