Sifu Review

Sifu is a very interesting game in concept. A game where you age when you die, but also grow stronger as you age. This concept alone was enough for me to put Sifu on my Top 5 games to play in 2022 list in the number 3 spot… Man, do I regret that now. Sifu is a game where the concept is great, but the execution comes off as something Dark Soul-like (I hated having to say that). I’m not sure what this sudden trend in overly punishing games is about, but it looks like Sifu has joined their ranks.

Name: Sifu
Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Developer: Sloclap
Publisher: Sloclap
Game Type: Action-adventure, brawler
Mode(s): Single-player
Release Date: February 8, 2022

 

The Most Basic of Martial Arts Stories… (Story)

Sifu is one of the most generic Martial Arts stories on the planet. You play as an unnamed boy/girl (Your choice) who is seeking revenge against a gang of former Students of your Father, the previous Sifu, whom they murdered in front of you. As you progress (HA! Progress, good joke there Sloclap… See Gameplay section below) through each of the five stages in the game, you’ll be collecting evidence that links each member to each other, their crimes, and to the murder of your Father. Each stage sees you taking down waves of thugs while working your way to the boss of the level, which is themed to each one of the bosses aliases (The Fighter, The Botanist, The Artist, and The CEO), before dispatching them and moving on to Yang, the leader of the group and the one who defeated your Father before having him killed.

Free Flow Punishment… (Gameplay)

Anyone who spent time reading Keith’s preview of Sifu will pretty much not have to read any further… But for those of you who didn’t, here’s the scoop.

The gameplay in Sifu will have you having Batman: Arkham Asylum/City/Knight flashbacks, as you’ll be fighting groups of enemies at once in close combat. The difference here is that in Sifu, you do not have any indication of when an enemy is going to attack, and most of them will attack within seconds of each other, leading to you getting your ass handed to you more often than not. One of the big gimmicks in Sifu is that you only have a limited amount of block available, and once that block is broken… You’re done. I don’t know how many times I put down the controller and walked away from Sifu out of pure rage around how punishing the AI is. Those of you who like games where you are, more often than not, in a corner with no way out will love Sifu. Those of you who don’t like getting your ass kicked because a gage says you can’t block, or a button press isn’t timed to the millisecond (Yep, counters are in a 0.01 range to be successful) for you to counter is going to turn you away from Sifu faster than I’ve seen people rage quit any other game from any genre.

When the combat actually works in your favor, you feel like a badass. While you only have a couple of buttons available to use for light and heavy attacks, the ease of which things can be chained together will make you feel like Donny Yen in Ip-Man (If you haven’t seen Ip-Man, I highly recommend it. Check out this scene from the movie for proof) or harken back to the old Bruce Lee days. Even the Focus attacks, the high-hitting special moves, are amazing to watch when you pull them off. At the basic end of things, Sifu plays like a good solid action brawler… Shame that everything else takes the fun away.

The main gimmick of Sifu is the Age system, which is one of two ways for you to use the experience points you gain from defeating enemies to gain new skills (The other are Jade Dragon Shrines found randomly through each area). You see, as you fight, you gain experience points by defeating each enemy, sometimes with a bonus multiplier if you are successful in defeating enemies in a row without taking too much damage or taking too much time between each fight. When you die, not only do you add to your age (with each death adding to your total life. Eg 1, 2, 3, etc. That number is added with each death, so hitting +7 years can happen quickly), but you get a chance to add to your skill tree which has a multitude of skills from directional input moves to focus moves. This skill tree system is a big risk vs. reward system. You have the option to either get a skill for a single run or try to bank that XP and unlock the skill permanently for all future runs. Then once you have upgraded and added to your age, you get to return to life and try to keep going. The drawback to this system is that the more you age, the less health and blocking ability you have, not to mention that you have a limit on how many times you can come back from the dead.

Sifu has a charm of 5 coins, each lasting about for a “10-year” span each before breaking. While this sounds like a lot of chances to keep going, and it is if you can keep your death count down by defeating specific mini-boss characters or special enemies who gain a rage state, but once you hit around Age 50 or so, Sifu becomes so punishing that you might as well reset and try from the beginning… Which is also what happens when all the coins break. When you restart in Sifu, which you’ll be doing often, you lose everything from the skill tree, your overall progression through the level (Unless you’ve unlocked the skill permanently), and any unspent experience points. This is something that had caused me to, once again, put the controller down and walk away before I was in a red hot rage that would cause me to break something. So while you do get to try again from the starting age of 20, you go back to being completely underpowered each time.

Beautiful but Deadly… (Graphics)

Sifu is a beautiful game done in a semi-cell shaded style that makes it look like a moving work of art. From the rain-drenched opening sequence to the neon-lit Nightclub stage, everything looks amazing. It’s surprising that such a simple art style can look so good that you would spend a few moments running around each stage checking out every single room that you can. The other really good graphical effect is the way that your character ages as you clock up those years to your body. Starting out with subtle changing of the hair from black to grey, and the slow growth of a beard, you’ll notice things happening once you get a moment alone to do so. One final thing about the graphics in Sifu is that it doesn’t go and take things down the blood and gore route, something that would have been interesting, but isn’t needed in the end and works in its favor.

Age is Like a River… (Replayability)

Sifu is one of those games where you are forced to replay it over and over again. The whole skill tree system is based around unlocking things either for a single run, where you lose them once you’ve gone through your life or spending 5 times the single unlock amount to unlock the skill permanently. I’m sure this is what is intended by Sloclap when they designed Sifu, but unless you take time to read and check every little thing in the menus, you’re going to miss and end up either spending on single run skills only to lose them, or you’re going to stockpile XP and then lose it all when you die anyway. It’s this weird risk vs reward vs need thing that is going to push a lot of the hardcore, Dark Souls style players to give Sifu a shot and probably enjoy it. I’m already seeing No Death runs appearing on YouTube from the preview version of Sifu that I can tell exactly who it’s going to be for at this point.

Aging like Fine Wine or Moldy Cheese? (closing)

Look, Sifu isn’t a bad game at all. It’s well designed and is challenging for those who like games that punish them for no other reason than “get good scrub.” From the outside, though, Sifu looks like one of those games with a great gimmick that should keep you coming back time and time again, but once people get their hands on it and see how much grinding, risk-taking, and extremely tightly timed the gameplay really is; I don’t see many people sticking around to play this for a long time, with many of them throwing controllers in a fit of rage. However, those people who like challenging and punishing games are going to love Sifu for the skill, timing, and patience it will take to become a martial arts master.

Review Disclosure Statement: Sifu was provided to us by Sloclap for review purposes. For more information on how we conduct and handle reviews here, please visit our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info. Thank you

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