Sifu remains an excellent third-person roguelike that taps into classic kung fu combat. With its multiple free updates thus far in 2022, patient gamers should be assured that now is the best time to try one of the most accessible but still challenging roguelikes of the year. Sure, the Switch's port is probably a suboptimal experience compared to the PS5's hardware. But, it runs pretty well on the Switch, and it's quite fun despite the graphical quibbles one may expect from the Switch's hardware. SLOCLAP has done a pretty good job with this port and free updates, making Sifu a shoe-in for those wanting a souls-like experience on their Switches.
Earlier this year, we reviewed Sifu on the PS4. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read Steven’s review, here’s a short summary (although I must recommend you read his thoughts, too): Sifu is delightfully difficult, putting players through a gauntlet of emotions spanning frustration to excitement. As a martial arts game, it blends roguelike gameplay loops with souls-like combat and difficulty into a nice neat package. At first, the controls can be confusing, at first, but mastering combos feels rewarding and satisfying as you progress. Now that Sifu is on the Nintendo Switch, you’re probably wondering: How does it hold up on the Switch? How does it feel playing the game on the smaller screen? And even more pressing: What should push you to consider Sifu on this platform? Hopefully, I can answer all of these questions.
Sifu puts the player in control of a young Kung Fu student who seeks to avenge the death of his family at the hands of an exiled group of assassins. You begin as a bright-eyed 20-year-old, and you must fight your way through waves of enemies using nought more than your fists and feet (and occasionally a weapon). When you die, you age, decreasing your health but increasing the damage you unleash among those who killed your family. Once you reach the ripe old age of 80 years old, it’s game over, and you start over. It’s up to you to manage your time wisely in order to get through the five bosses who stand in your way.
Let’s get this out of the way now: I quite liked playing Sifu during this review period, and I see myself coming back to it this holiday season when I have more time on my hands. If anything, it’s the first third-person souls-like I’ve enjoyed, as I hate hate _hate_ the core gameplay loop of souls games. “Just get better” or “roll around your enemies” isn’t the kind of experience I want in a game that’s already putting me through the ringer. I enjoy timing, precision, and progression. In my experience, souls-games tend to err on forcing players to die over and over and over again, obfuscating senses of progression. Sifu doesn’t obfuscate progression that much, but progressing even the smallest amount becomes satisfying.
Sifu‘s combat relies on precision, timing, and some memorization. If you’re familiar with fighting games, you may already know the importance of memorizing button combos and pressing specific buttons at the right time. In Sifu, kung fu combos vary up how you fight enemies. It seems straightforward at first, especially during the game’s short, but sweet, tutorial. But, once you’re fighting through the city, you may feel compelled to button mash or spam the same kung fu combo over and over again. At least, that’s what I did, and boy did I suffer for it. I learned very quickly that dodging and parrying using the left trigger (L button) was mandatory to prevent my character from losing health. For the most part, enemies telegraph their abilities in a visible fashion through glowing orange hands/feet and some windup animations. But sometimes, being surrounded by enemies can cause you to incur large amounts of damage quickly.
Executing kung fu combos on the Joy-Cons is a relatively satisfying affair. When you block, take damage, or dish it out, your Joy-Cons will vibrate accordingly. The Switch’s hardware offers players immersion as you fight, and it feels pretty dang good. Getting feedback in the form of vibrations communicates the power you wield and the damage you take, and never once did I find it to be distracting. My only complaint, if you will, is that I would have liked something unique to happen when I properly executed a combo, be it a long complicated chain of fists or a short-but-sweet special move that grounded my enemies. Even if the Switch’s Joy-Cons can’t necessarily compare to the DualSense’s haptics and triggers, a visual cue or a single unique vibration would add to that satisfaction. As it stands, I have trouble differentiating between kung fu combos that I am properly executing and attacks I may be improperly using because of my inputs not registering correctly.
When I first began playing Sifu, I thought I had everything down pat. I didn’t dodge much, nor did I run around, and I relied on the same one-two-punch combo to clear through enemies. If I saw a weapon lying around, I would abuse its power to the point of me relying on weapons to clear through enemies rather than my own skills. Clearly, this was not the way to play, and I learned halfway through the first level that I would need to be more thoughtful in how I executed combos and navigated the environments. By the time I got to the second stage (The Club), I felt that the level was outright impossible to proceed. I would say that the difficulty curve, even on the “Disciple” (Medium) difficulty, is deceptively steep but still manageable for those who are patient. Thinking back to my review of Aeterna Noctis (which remains one of the hardest, but most satisfying, platformers I’ve played to date) and experience playing RETURNAL, I can confidently tell you that the first level of Sifu gives you but a taste of the difficulty the game has to offer. The real game begins on the second level, and you should be prepared to be discouraged.
Unlike RETURNAL, though, Sifu‘s progression and gameplay loop are evident and impactful rather than invisible. Clearing enemies earns you experience that can be spent on character upgrades. These character upgrades are, by default, temporary and exclusive to your current run. When you inevitably die, you lose all of the upgrades you unlocked. However, you have the opportunity to spend your experience to “level up” any one perk, and once you level it up five times…it’s permanently unlocked for all future runs! Just like that! Frankly, this is the kind of roguelike progression that I wish more games implemented, as you have to make the conscious choice to “play deep” by spending all of your experience on one single upgrade to keep it or “play wide” by unlocking multiple temporary upgrades. Even more, by spending the small cost to temporarily unlock an upgrade, you get a feel for how it works and its worth as you continue on through the game. You WILL have to start over and replay content, and having a feel of “what’s worth it now” versus unlocking something later in the form of Sifu‘s upgrade tree.
Sifu‘s level select model is also incredibly player friendly. Let’s say you completely manage to complete the first stage completely, but you died a few times, meaning you’ve reached the ripe age of 35 years old. If you’ve been keen eyed and explored a bit, you may have found an item that allows you to take a shortcut the next time you choose to play the first level, shaving you a few waves of enemies and getting you closer to the boss. Either way, you start the next stage at age 35. If you are unsuccessful in reaching and/or defeating the boss of the second stage, you can restart the second stage with any progression items you’ve picked up (like the shortcut items!) and you remain age 35. This means you don’t have to start all the way over on the first level if you made some goofy mistakes in the second level. I recommend starting over, though, so you can accumulate additional experience to unlock permanent upgrades and attempt to complete the level by dying as few times as possible so that you’re “younger” in the next stage, thus retaining your best run yet.
Again, Sifu is incredibly player-friendly. It doesn’t force you to start over every time you die; it encourages you to start over through the several gameplay levers I mentioned above. Sifu rewards you to making thoughtful decisions as to how you build your character and how you spend your time. When it pays off in the form of defeating a boss for the first time or even getting one room farther than ever before, man, it feels so satisfying.
Since we initially reviewed Sifu in February, SLOCLAP has been hard at work adding new features and gameplay systems that broaden Sifu’s replayability and accessibility for more players. If you’ve read my reviews before now, you’re probably familiar with how much I praise accessibility in all of its forms, spanning difficulty levers to “hidden cheats.” One of Sifu‘s first updates broke out three difficulty settings: Student (easy), Disciple (medium), and Master (hard); for a game like Sifu, having the opportunity to make things easier is a blessing for folks who are struggling with the combat. An advanced training mode was added, giving you opportunities to practice against specific opponents and bosses so that future runs are easier. I’ve used this training mode, and it’s on par with Super Smash Bros Ultimate‘s training environment. If you were unsure about Sifu earlier this year, let me assure you: the free updates to Sifu has made the game more appealing than ever.
But is it worth it on the Switch? My answer to that is yes, but you should probably wait a bit. The Switch is no stranger to visual downgrades, long loading times, and inconsistent framerates. Sifu‘s port to the Switch has all of these quirks, with varying degrees of impact to the game. SLOCLAP has aimed to ensure that the game runs at a consistent 30FPS when you’re in-combat, and they’ve been mostly successful. However, when there are multiple enemies on the screen and/or you move the camera too quickly, you’ll definitely notice choppiness and frame skips, and you may feel that it’s impacting your precision in dodging attacks and enacting combos. When you’re walking through the Wuguan (your home base), the framerate is quite inconsistent, too. Handheld mode was the least enjoyable experience graphically, but I was still able to progress quite far in the game without needing to switch to docking mode. The loading screens are also quite long (but not as long as other ports we’ve recently reviewed), and I only encountered one instance where I was stuck in a loading screen and unable to progress without restarting the game. Luckily, my progress was saved, so I didn’t have to start over.
We purposefully delayed releasing this review earlier this week to see if there were any patches released that would make the game smoother in some capacity. To our knowledge, we did not see a patch on Day 1. This should not deter you from purchasing this game for the Switch, though. SLOCLAP remains committed to supporting the game with future updates as they have throughout this year, so it may be worth waiting another week or two for a stability patch before jumping in. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had another gameplay update up their sleeves, too…
Sifu remains an excellent third-person roguelike that taps into classic kung fu combat. With its multiple free updates thus far in 2022, patient gamers should be assured that now is the best time to try one of the most accessible but still challenging roguelikes of the year. Sure, the Switch’s port is probably a suboptimal experience compared to the PS5’s hardware. But, it runs pretty well on the Switch, and it’s quite fun despite the graphical quibbles one may expect from the Switch’s hardware. SLOCLAP has done a pretty good job with this port and free updates, making Sifu a shoe-in for those wanting a souls-like experience on their Switches.
