Sifu gives players the chance to live out their kung fu movie dreams by taking a martial artist on a long, arduous journey of vengeance for the killing of his father, who happened to also be their sifu. A third person action game with roguelike elements reminiscent of a Souls game, Sifu will test your reflexes, dexterity, and endurance as you fight through dozens of enemies and five particularly challenging bosses.
When I first heard about Sifu, I was excited — I enjoy the martial arts, and I loved the Ip Man movies starring Donnie Yen. Sifu looked like a videogame take on the classic kung fu movie. While the game is based on Pak Mei (or Bak Mei, or White Eyebrow, I’ve seen it described different ways), that style certainly has similarities to Ip’s wing chun. Though you will fight mostly empty-handed, there are many situations where clubs, bottles, bo staffs, and various blades come into play — but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as some classical empty hand kung fu that has your rapid blocks and strikes overwhelm the enemies.
Slocap brought in the services of a Pak Mei master to motion capture, and that greatly adds to the sense of authentic, believable actions in Sifu. The movements look real, animate beautifully, and sound great, with few exceptions. The satisfaction of the combat is a big reason why I keep coming back to play it more, despite it’s often frustrating difficulty. I appreciate that Sifu is not an easy game, but in the same token, it’s also one that can get darn frustrating thanks to punishing mini-bosses and the five main bosses.
Now, there is a continue system, but it’s pretty complicated, and does have a limit. Fortunately, you can refer to some of the game’s base rules anytime from the pause menu by looking at the lower left corner of the Board, which is where your character keeps track of all of the items and observations of interest from all of the games levels — more on that in a bit. So when you game over or give up, you can choose which level you want to play from the ones you have unlocked. You will start the level at the youngest age that you have reached it at. For example, the first level, The Squats, is where the game begins, so you will always start that level off at age 20. Then, when you have beaten the first boss, known as The Botantist, you’re on to The Club, at whatever age that you beat The Botantist at. It becomes obviously very important to complete levels with the best age that you can, because once you start hitting the mid-40s, the game rather quickly spirals out of control and you’re dead in your 70s in no-time. Besides your health being reduced as you age, the age-factor increases quicker and quicker the more times you die. It’s easier played-than-explained, but for example the first time you die you age from 20 to 21. If you don’t defeat the enemy that defeated you, and reclaim that ‘1’ difference by doing so, then the next time you die you will age by two years, instead of just 1. As this modifier increases, you will find yourself adding 4, 5, or 7 years to your age, and of course in no time you’re dead because, well, the math just works against you. Another factor in this is that skills have to be unlocked by certain ages; you can’t be 59 years old and unlock something for the 35 and under group, for example. Anyway, I didn’t do the best job of explaining that, but suffice to say that the game is tough, and gets only tougher when you die, but it’s not totally unforgiving.
Skills and upgrades that you have unlocked during previous runs will be lost, but, all items (like keys, which are great for shortcuts to the boss) and intel you find for the Board are retained. Next point is probably the most important for me: permanently unlocked skills are maintained under any condition, as long as you’re using the same save file. This is a critically important point for me, because, were it not for the ability to permanently unlock the dozen+ special skills (several of which are absolutely vital to success in my opinion), there would have been no way I would have stuck with this game. But thankfully, and wisely of Sloclap, you can permanently unlock skills, though it will take a considerable amount of grinding to do so. However, replaying the levels in Sifu is more palatable than most games, (looking at you, Souls), because the levels are relatively short and the game gets more fun over time because you unlock more skills and you just get better, too. Each time you play a level, everything is exactly the same as it was before (which is fine with me) by the way, there are no changes to enemy type or placement. Plus, items within the game interweave, so for example in The Squats, there is a locked door that you can’t unlock until you get to the last level (5) and find the key to a door, so there is reason to revisit areas even later in the game. Neat stuff.
I typically loathe games that have you repeating things a lot, and I tend to stay away from the Souls-like and rogue-like genres. I didn’t even like Deathloop that much in large part because the gameplay loop had you redoing things over and over again, ad nauseum, and I just don’t want to budget my time for that. With Sifu, though, I found myself coming back for more because I enjoyed the gameplay loop and I enjoyed being able to earn permanent upgrades. Plus, when it comes to fictional characters — be they superheroes, space marines, mighty warriors, whatever the character-type may be, a kung fu master would be one of my top choices to play as. To again draw a comparison to the Souls games, I relate to and like the protagonist in Sifu so much more than I did with Souls. I’d rather be good with kung fu than with wielding a sword or what have you, in other words. All that to say that, unlike most games that have this rogue-like, permadeath, start over again and again design, Sifu actually clicked with me and kept me coming back. Yes, I absolutely got frustrated at times while playing, and indeed there have been two or three patches for the game already, some or all of which adjusted difficulty, etc. But I never felt like Sifu was wasting my time because it’s so fun, I could spend XP towards permanent skills, and the levels are concise.
Sifu has a lot of gameplay mechanics that you have to learn about and practice to stand a chance. Many enemies are sponges for punishment and have powerful structures (defensive postures) that can take hit after hit and they won’t be phased. Button-mashing won’t get you beyond the first level. Getting used to deflections, blocks, parrys, side-stepping — it’s a process, and takes significant practice. You can practice in your character’s home by visiting the wooden dummy, and that’s helpful, but diving into the game is really the only way to get better. Your character’s health meter is short and it doesn’t take many hits to kill you, but, if you learn to block and parry and uphold your own structure, you will last a lot longer. Holding L1 and whipping the left stick around to accordingly block incoming blows is essential, and it’s a skill set I don’t think I have had to use with such speed and precision in other games. I feel like it works good, but I will say there are times when I thought hits got through that shouldn’t have, and times when I was trying to do a sweep that didn’t go through, and that’s annoying. To do a sweep, or a palm strike while empty-handed, you press down, up, and either Triangle or Square; the problem is when the down, up of the left stick doesn’t register, and you are left standing there not doing the move you wanted to do. Anytime a game (especially Japanese fighting games, like Street Fighter or BlazBlue for me) has me struggling as much with the controls as I am with the action on screen, it’s a powerful immersion-breaker for me. Sifu does not totally avoid this problem, but it does for the most part.
In terms of presentation, I played this on a PS4 Pro instead of my PS5 for logistical reasons, and the load times are noticeable, but you’re only loading at the start of the game and levels. Once you’re in a level and you die, there is no load time to resurrect and continue. Graphically, it’s not a super impressive game as far as the engine used, but it looks very good nonetheless — the characters are a little boxy/low poly looking, kind of reminded me of some old school Virtua Fighter, but obviously not that low poly. Animations are smooth and the cel-shaded look just continues to work for me, gaming generation after generation. Sounds are good, there is some foul language but not a whole lot. Still, I wish there were a way to disable the foul language altogether because the game is fairly tame in many respects otherwise, as far as a younger audience being able to play or watch this.
Sifu gets a lot more right than not, and though I typically can’t stand to play games that force heavy-handed repetitive loops, I found myself enjoying Sifu too much to put it away for long. Playing Sifu is a cycle of emotions; it’s tough, fun, frustrating, and rewarding, not always in that order. I think Sloclap did a solid job overall and I would also point out that the game is priced very reasonably at about $50, too. If you enjoy detailed, authentic martial arts action, Sifu is not only one of the only choices out there, but it’s a great one.
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