The mid-budget character action game is having a strong few years! Sifu is a very strong contender in the space of 'Sekiro-parrylikes', thanks to a really striking aesthetic and a genuinely quite novel take on progression. It takes some effort to understand, and isn't explained all that well, but it breaks down like this:
- Each time you die, your death amount goes up by one, and your age increases by your death amount. Once you are 70 or older, any death forces you to restart the current level.
- When you beat a level, your age is saved, and you start the next level at that age. Because of this, you can get to later levels and be old enough that you only have a couple of chances to die, making the level much more difficult.
- To make later levels easier, you can go back to any previous level, and beat it without dying as much. If you do that, the subsequent level will be easier to beat, and if you beat that one at a younger age, the one after that will be easier too, etc.
- Basically, the better you get at earlier levels, the more comfortable later levels become.
There's other things that intersect with this system in slightly more complex ways, but in essence, it's always valuable - sometimes to the point of necessity - to increase your mastery of a level, as it gives you more room to master later levels. The shortcuts and gentle branching paths of the levels make this process relatively painless, but it's the satisfying way that a clean run helps you push the entire game forward that's the real draw. Mastery has a purpose, outside of inherent appeal, or making an arbitrary score number bigger, or some cosmetic reward.
It's a theme that's very much aligned with the aesthetic, though I wouldn't say it necessarily builds up to much. The story is brief and interstitial, with the impact mostly coming from killer visuals and presentation. While they can sometimes draw a little too strongly from obvious influences (they get their Oldboy corridor fight in halfway through the first level) the character design and animation really stand out, and the way enemies collide with walls and surfaces when you take them down never stops being impressive. It would be nice if there was more to chew on in a narrative sense, outside the well-trodden ground of whether or not revenge is worth it.
Perhaps my experience with the game is undermined by the fact that I am, despite some experimentation, clearly missing some key element required to obtain a 'true ending'; without that, it doesn't manage much more than to translate some clear, maybe-too-obvious influences into a very pretty, well-paced experience of martial mastery.
- Each time you die, your death amount goes up by one, and your age increases by your death amount. Once you are 70 or older, any death forces you to restart the current level.
- When you beat a level, your age is saved, and you start the next level at that age. Because of this, you can get to later levels and be old enough that you only have a couple of chances to die, making the level much more difficult.
- To make later levels easier, you can go back to any previous level, and beat it without dying as much. If you do that, the subsequent level will be easier to beat, and if you beat that one at a younger age, the one after that will be easier too, etc.
- Basically, the better you get at earlier levels, the more comfortable later levels become.
There's other things that intersect with this system in slightly more complex ways, but in essence, it's always valuable - sometimes to the point of necessity - to increase your mastery of a level, as it gives you more room to master later levels. The shortcuts and gentle branching paths of the levels make this process relatively painless, but it's the satisfying way that a clean run helps you push the entire game forward that's the real draw. Mastery has a purpose, outside of inherent appeal, or making an arbitrary score number bigger, or some cosmetic reward.
It's a theme that's very much aligned with the aesthetic, though I wouldn't say it necessarily builds up to much. The story is brief and interstitial, with the impact mostly coming from killer visuals and presentation. While they can sometimes draw a little too strongly from obvious influences (they get their Oldboy corridor fight in halfway through the first level) the character design and animation really stand out, and the way enemies collide with walls and surfaces when you take them down never stops being impressive. It would be nice if there was more to chew on in a narrative sense, outside the well-trodden ground of whether or not revenge is worth it.
Perhaps my experience with the game is undermined by the fact that I am, despite some experimentation, clearly missing some key element required to obtain a 'true ending'; without that, it doesn't manage much more than to translate some clear, maybe-too-obvious influences into a very pretty, well-paced experience of martial mastery.