This review contains spoilers
Sifu is a game where I knew after watching one preview build that I knew I would be into it. It's a slow paced kung fu brawler that can quickly end in your death if your not ready. The best thing about Sifu is that it really does make me feel like i'm playing an old jackie chan or jet li film. It reminds me of like hard boiled but with fists instead of guns and gameplay mechanics that made me think of one of my all time favorites Godhand.
The basic rundown of how gameplay goes is you travel from room to room leveling out some low level thugs and end the stage with a boss. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Story is very light to nothing. Pure gameplay experiance. The game is very tough starting out. Every time you die your age increases by 1. Then if you die again your age increases by 2 and so forth. The maximum age is 78 and if you die then it's game over. By defeating tough oppenents you can reset your death counter by 1 age or you can spend a lofty amount of experiance to reset the counter back to zero but you can never reverse your age. I think this is a pretty special gimmick and one unique to this game, which helps it give it's identity, especially how brutal it can be at the start when learning this game. Everytime you kill an enemy you get experiance points which can be spent on learning new moves or upgrading your stats. However get a game over and everyone resets back to square one and you gotta start the whole thing over. Stats never come back but the game is fortunate enough that if you buy a new skill 5 separte times you can perminitly keep that skill. So it does feel like losses have a feeling of getting something out of it and you expand your moveset over time to help you get better. The issue for me is that a great deal of the unlockable skills I found to be mostly useless. The sweep skill which you start out with is far better attack skill than anything you can learn or purchase. Some skills are worth the investments but they are very much trivial and situational. Only one or two I would consider must haves. I felt like by the half way point I was just filling out a skill list without really using most of them. In addition some skills can take several bars of meter to use and if you weren't putting several upgrade points into meter building than you can't even use the skills to start with even if they are unlocked. Even if at max skill meter I'll take 3 sweeps over one 360 pole strike.
As for combat you have one string of weak but fast punch attacks and one string of hard strikes. Of course they can be mixed and matched to do different techniques but once again I find myself using basic weak strings with an occasional kick ender being the most effective combo and nothing to fancy. It does look fancy on screen though. Anyway the idea of a fight is that every enemey and yourself has a health bar and a stamina bar. If an stamina bar is lowered to zero you can execute a finisher to instantly take out the enemy. Most battles end with an enemies stamina bar being reduced. On the defensive side you have your standard block and dodge. Blocking attacks increases you stamina bar getting it closer to breaking. If your stamina bar breaks you will become stunned and unable to be moved and in most cases an enemy will have enough time to kill you. Just holding block is not enough to survive. You have a sort of spot dodge you can use to dodge attacks. Dodged attacks will actually recover a portion of your stamina bar. So if you have to much build up this is a great way to get some stamina back. Finally the main way to get good at this game is to master the parry. If you can perfectly time your block you will parry the enemies attack and deal a great deal of stamina damage which usually can lead up to several devastating attacks with their defenses down or straight up to a finisher. When mastering the game most enemies are dispatched this way. Parrying feels very much like the parry systems of Metal Gear Rising and Sekiro here, just with fists and not swords. There are many different types of finishers as well and they are all determined based on if your bare handed or holding a weapon, the type of enemy and the position of the enemy. When putting everything togather in a fluid motion the games feels really good going from enemy to enemy landing a few attack strings, parrying an attack and ending with a finisher and quickly repeating that with the next enemy. It's really a awesome feeling clearing a room of people out in rapid succession and feeling like a kung fu master. This is the meat of the game.
As I mentioned earlier there are weapons you can pick up as well and honestly I'm really mixed on them. You can find club type weapons such as sticks, bats and crow bars and a machete blade and a staff. Each has their own movesets and skills that can be learned. Also their is a skill to increase their durability and also a run specific upgrade that can increase their damage. Using the club weapons feels really good and I think is by far the best weapon for look and feel as well as the best option of attack overall. Machete i find pretty weak in attack overall and the staff is slightly better than the fists. I really wish their were more varity to weapons here but I think they limited it for a varity of reasons. One this is more a kung fu game so they wanted to keep weapons more in line to what a kung fu fighter would use and two they wanted to balance the ones they had more than adding more. I honestly think that weapons are very overpowered in this game. Even leveling up the weapons a little bit increases their durability tenfold and it feels like you can use them forever. The bat is by far the best as it hits hard and fast and can shred a group of enemies quickly. The machete sucks overall but it has one special attack that gets rid of it and can instantly kill an enemy no matter how strong they are. The staff is rarely used but overall I think it's fine and it is a type of weapon a fighter like this would use. I think the weapons could have used a bit of a nerf.
As for the stages there are 5 different ones in your revenge quest. The stages themselves aren't very long, about 20-30 min each. There are multiple items and keys to collect to flesh out the back story and to unlock a varity of paths. I wouldn't say it's openend because it's not but think of it as unlocking short cuts from the main path to lead to the end quicker. Kinda like short cuts in a Souls game. So a stage that is only 20-30 min long can be cut down to about 15 min. Which can lead to some pretty quick stage completions. Hell I did a speedrun for fun and I beat the whole game in about 45 min. Don't let that dissuade you though as it will take many runs of practice to build up your skills and tries to unlock the short cuts. Plus some stages have locked doors that can be only unlocked when playing other stages. For example a door in stage 3 can only be unlocked if you find a room in stage 2 which you can't get into unless you went into a room in stage 4. So some creativity here with that but it's mainly for collectibles so really unless your a completionist like me you won't really see it much. This is a game that meant to be played and finished in quick bursts and improve your skills, points and age. You can always select any stage at anytime and you will always start that stage in the lowest age you ever made it to there. So there is merit and going back and nailing a stage just so you can start the the next stage at that age. I beat the game the first time at age 25 because I kept going back to perfect my stage run.
As for the stages themselves I find stages 1 and 2 really good with 3 and 4 being weaker and stage 5 okay. That's because stages 1 and 2 are the longest and there are a lot of enemeies and background varity to mix it up. Stage 3 is artisticlly cool but feels like a slog at times. Stage 1 has the daredevil hallway fight so it's the best.
Now for the bosses, which are a large part of the game. 5 stages and 5 bosses. I'm gonna be upfront here. I'm not a fan of the bosses. In my humble opinion they are very one dimentional, have a ton of health and deal a ton of damage. It's basically a get good at mastery of them or die. They all have two phases. The first boss I think is one of the better ones. He is pretty simple for the most part mechanicly. It seems like each boss has a difined path of what they are structurely weak too. The first boss is all about spot dodges and counter strikes. Regular blocks and parries are way less safe than dodges and his blades will shread your health if you aren't perfect. Overall not bad, but a definite roadblock if you haven't learned the games systems yet. The second boss is very much like the first boss. Spot dodes are the way to go. You can parry as well but it's honestly less effective. The main problem here is this guy uses the same 1 or 2 combo strings the entire time so all you have to do is practice the same dodge timing. Almost no variety here. The fight really drags as all he does is the same attack patteren and just has a shit ton of health. Fight lasts forever. Plus the camera is really shit here and you can easily be stuck inbetween some pillars and one wrong dodge when the camera is stuck can land you in a death. It's only on the last 25% of round two does he start doing high low attack mixups but at that point it's pretty much over. And that's the thing I wanna bring up. The high low mix up game in attack strings is really really hard to do on reaction, which in turn would make bosses way more harder and more memorable but with the way the bosses are set up now would be a frustrating mess. Maybe make the bosses damage less punishing but actually increase their attack movesets so I'm not just memorizsing a pattern. That's the real problem of the game. I feel like I'm memorizing a patteren of repition as opposed to learning a spot on reflex or attack strategy. Everything feels one note. As for boss 3 she is both the worst and best boss. The first phase is complete nonsense. She has a long reaching sickle that does insane block damage and is extremely hard to dodge. So the best strategy I see most people take is to run around her, wait for her to preform one specific attack string, bait it and dodge the last hit and get a few hits in and repeat. I see everyone do this. It's very boring and feels like i'm not even playing the game right but it honestly is the best strat for beating her. Phase 2 is the only boss where everything changes completly and it's an entire different boss altoghater and over all my favorite. If all the bosses where like this I would feel very much different about the game. Parries, dodges and skills are all put to good use here with a variety of moves that can be overcomed in many ways. Good fight. Boss 4 is a complete joke and is the easiest one of all. Oned damn attack string repeated over and over. Just stay your distance and she will never do anything else for both phases. Complete joke. Boss 5 the final boss is kinda underwhelming. For whatever reason you can't use skill on him. The game just says it won't work. Uh okay it's not like skills are that OP but whatever. This fight is all about the parry. You can not land a single hit on this dude because he insta dodges everything. You can only land a hit after a parry. So really this is just a game of parry every attack and increase his stamina gauge. Which is fine on paper, it's the main mechanic of the game. However it really feels like i'm just mashing parry as opposed to really timing it. The dude attacks in rapid sucession and does all these fancy strings repeaditly. Which you either parry perfectly for big damage or you die. He can take you out very fast. But also at the same time he is gracious enough to just stand there and mock you and never attack unless you strike first so you can stand there and recover your stamina. Thanks bro, makes for a really slow boring fight. I'll recover my finger from mashing for a bit. Phase 2 is pretty much more the same but a few new attack strings that require dodges and a increased ferocity. Overall good but way too punishing.
Now the summary. Sifu is a fun game that I think is actually held back by it's budget. It's competently well made and polished but I can tell the animations were where most of the money went into. It's not a bad thing. I think with things more expanded, not nessasirly longer, and better bosses and some gameplay refinments with more a story this could have been a great game instead of a good game. Sifu does scratch that brawler itch though and once you get in the harmony of the gameplay it is very satisfying. I still recommend it but keep your expectations in check and Sifu can be a great time.
Platinum #170
The basic rundown of how gameplay goes is you travel from room to room leveling out some low level thugs and end the stage with a boss. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Story is very light to nothing. Pure gameplay experiance. The game is very tough starting out. Every time you die your age increases by 1. Then if you die again your age increases by 2 and so forth. The maximum age is 78 and if you die then it's game over. By defeating tough oppenents you can reset your death counter by 1 age or you can spend a lofty amount of experiance to reset the counter back to zero but you can never reverse your age. I think this is a pretty special gimmick and one unique to this game, which helps it give it's identity, especially how brutal it can be at the start when learning this game. Everytime you kill an enemy you get experiance points which can be spent on learning new moves or upgrading your stats. However get a game over and everyone resets back to square one and you gotta start the whole thing over. Stats never come back but the game is fortunate enough that if you buy a new skill 5 separte times you can perminitly keep that skill. So it does feel like losses have a feeling of getting something out of it and you expand your moveset over time to help you get better. The issue for me is that a great deal of the unlockable skills I found to be mostly useless. The sweep skill which you start out with is far better attack skill than anything you can learn or purchase. Some skills are worth the investments but they are very much trivial and situational. Only one or two I would consider must haves. I felt like by the half way point I was just filling out a skill list without really using most of them. In addition some skills can take several bars of meter to use and if you weren't putting several upgrade points into meter building than you can't even use the skills to start with even if they are unlocked. Even if at max skill meter I'll take 3 sweeps over one 360 pole strike.
As for combat you have one string of weak but fast punch attacks and one string of hard strikes. Of course they can be mixed and matched to do different techniques but once again I find myself using basic weak strings with an occasional kick ender being the most effective combo and nothing to fancy. It does look fancy on screen though. Anyway the idea of a fight is that every enemey and yourself has a health bar and a stamina bar. If an stamina bar is lowered to zero you can execute a finisher to instantly take out the enemy. Most battles end with an enemies stamina bar being reduced. On the defensive side you have your standard block and dodge. Blocking attacks increases you stamina bar getting it closer to breaking. If your stamina bar breaks you will become stunned and unable to be moved and in most cases an enemy will have enough time to kill you. Just holding block is not enough to survive. You have a sort of spot dodge you can use to dodge attacks. Dodged attacks will actually recover a portion of your stamina bar. So if you have to much build up this is a great way to get some stamina back. Finally the main way to get good at this game is to master the parry. If you can perfectly time your block you will parry the enemies attack and deal a great deal of stamina damage which usually can lead up to several devastating attacks with their defenses down or straight up to a finisher. When mastering the game most enemies are dispatched this way. Parrying feels very much like the parry systems of Metal Gear Rising and Sekiro here, just with fists and not swords. There are many different types of finishers as well and they are all determined based on if your bare handed or holding a weapon, the type of enemy and the position of the enemy. When putting everything togather in a fluid motion the games feels really good going from enemy to enemy landing a few attack strings, parrying an attack and ending with a finisher and quickly repeating that with the next enemy. It's really a awesome feeling clearing a room of people out in rapid succession and feeling like a kung fu master. This is the meat of the game.
As I mentioned earlier there are weapons you can pick up as well and honestly I'm really mixed on them. You can find club type weapons such as sticks, bats and crow bars and a machete blade and a staff. Each has their own movesets and skills that can be learned. Also their is a skill to increase their durability and also a run specific upgrade that can increase their damage. Using the club weapons feels really good and I think is by far the best weapon for look and feel as well as the best option of attack overall. Machete i find pretty weak in attack overall and the staff is slightly better than the fists. I really wish their were more varity to weapons here but I think they limited it for a varity of reasons. One this is more a kung fu game so they wanted to keep weapons more in line to what a kung fu fighter would use and two they wanted to balance the ones they had more than adding more. I honestly think that weapons are very overpowered in this game. Even leveling up the weapons a little bit increases their durability tenfold and it feels like you can use them forever. The bat is by far the best as it hits hard and fast and can shred a group of enemies quickly. The machete sucks overall but it has one special attack that gets rid of it and can instantly kill an enemy no matter how strong they are. The staff is rarely used but overall I think it's fine and it is a type of weapon a fighter like this would use. I think the weapons could have used a bit of a nerf.
As for the stages there are 5 different ones in your revenge quest. The stages themselves aren't very long, about 20-30 min each. There are multiple items and keys to collect to flesh out the back story and to unlock a varity of paths. I wouldn't say it's openend because it's not but think of it as unlocking short cuts from the main path to lead to the end quicker. Kinda like short cuts in a Souls game. So a stage that is only 20-30 min long can be cut down to about 15 min. Which can lead to some pretty quick stage completions. Hell I did a speedrun for fun and I beat the whole game in about 45 min. Don't let that dissuade you though as it will take many runs of practice to build up your skills and tries to unlock the short cuts. Plus some stages have locked doors that can be only unlocked when playing other stages. For example a door in stage 3 can only be unlocked if you find a room in stage 2 which you can't get into unless you went into a room in stage 4. So some creativity here with that but it's mainly for collectibles so really unless your a completionist like me you won't really see it much. This is a game that meant to be played and finished in quick bursts and improve your skills, points and age. You can always select any stage at anytime and you will always start that stage in the lowest age you ever made it to there. So there is merit and going back and nailing a stage just so you can start the the next stage at that age. I beat the game the first time at age 25 because I kept going back to perfect my stage run.
As for the stages themselves I find stages 1 and 2 really good with 3 and 4 being weaker and stage 5 okay. That's because stages 1 and 2 are the longest and there are a lot of enemeies and background varity to mix it up. Stage 3 is artisticlly cool but feels like a slog at times. Stage 1 has the daredevil hallway fight so it's the best.
Now for the bosses, which are a large part of the game. 5 stages and 5 bosses. I'm gonna be upfront here. I'm not a fan of the bosses. In my humble opinion they are very one dimentional, have a ton of health and deal a ton of damage. It's basically a get good at mastery of them or die. They all have two phases. The first boss I think is one of the better ones. He is pretty simple for the most part mechanicly. It seems like each boss has a difined path of what they are structurely weak too. The first boss is all about spot dodges and counter strikes. Regular blocks and parries are way less safe than dodges and his blades will shread your health if you aren't perfect. Overall not bad, but a definite roadblock if you haven't learned the games systems yet. The second boss is very much like the first boss. Spot dodes are the way to go. You can parry as well but it's honestly less effective. The main problem here is this guy uses the same 1 or 2 combo strings the entire time so all you have to do is practice the same dodge timing. Almost no variety here. The fight really drags as all he does is the same attack patteren and just has a shit ton of health. Fight lasts forever. Plus the camera is really shit here and you can easily be stuck inbetween some pillars and one wrong dodge when the camera is stuck can land you in a death. It's only on the last 25% of round two does he start doing high low attack mixups but at that point it's pretty much over. And that's the thing I wanna bring up. The high low mix up game in attack strings is really really hard to do on reaction, which in turn would make bosses way more harder and more memorable but with the way the bosses are set up now would be a frustrating mess. Maybe make the bosses damage less punishing but actually increase their attack movesets so I'm not just memorizsing a pattern. That's the real problem of the game. I feel like I'm memorizing a patteren of repition as opposed to learning a spot on reflex or attack strategy. Everything feels one note. As for boss 3 she is both the worst and best boss. The first phase is complete nonsense. She has a long reaching sickle that does insane block damage and is extremely hard to dodge. So the best strategy I see most people take is to run around her, wait for her to preform one specific attack string, bait it and dodge the last hit and get a few hits in and repeat. I see everyone do this. It's very boring and feels like i'm not even playing the game right but it honestly is the best strat for beating her. Phase 2 is the only boss where everything changes completly and it's an entire different boss altoghater and over all my favorite. If all the bosses where like this I would feel very much different about the game. Parries, dodges and skills are all put to good use here with a variety of moves that can be overcomed in many ways. Good fight. Boss 4 is a complete joke and is the easiest one of all. Oned damn attack string repeated over and over. Just stay your distance and she will never do anything else for both phases. Complete joke. Boss 5 the final boss is kinda underwhelming. For whatever reason you can't use skill on him. The game just says it won't work. Uh okay it's not like skills are that OP but whatever. This fight is all about the parry. You can not land a single hit on this dude because he insta dodges everything. You can only land a hit after a parry. So really this is just a game of parry every attack and increase his stamina gauge. Which is fine on paper, it's the main mechanic of the game. However it really feels like i'm just mashing parry as opposed to really timing it. The dude attacks in rapid sucession and does all these fancy strings repeaditly. Which you either parry perfectly for big damage or you die. He can take you out very fast. But also at the same time he is gracious enough to just stand there and mock you and never attack unless you strike first so you can stand there and recover your stamina. Thanks bro, makes for a really slow boring fight. I'll recover my finger from mashing for a bit. Phase 2 is pretty much more the same but a few new attack strings that require dodges and a increased ferocity. Overall good but way too punishing.
Now the summary. Sifu is a fun game that I think is actually held back by it's budget. It's competently well made and polished but I can tell the animations were where most of the money went into. It's not a bad thing. I think with things more expanded, not nessasirly longer, and better bosses and some gameplay refinments with more a story this could have been a great game instead of a good game. Sifu does scratch that brawler itch though and once you get in the harmony of the gameplay it is very satisfying. I still recommend it but keep your expectations in check and Sifu can be a great time.
Platinum #170