Sifu was quite a surprising hit when it first came out earlier this year. It seemed interesting to me but I wasn't fully sold on it - and it was pleasantly surprising to see it get a bunch of good reviews. That and finding out despite it not really being marketed that you could chose the gender of the protag ultimately made me pick this up quickly. And then proceed to not beat it until the year is nearly over.

Sifu's a game a lot of people compare to John Wick for some reason but there's no gun fu. The combat is pretty solid. It feels great and the finishers are satisfying but honestly I wasn't really a big fan of it beyond that. There's very little in the way of tells for attacks and some of the combos you can unlock are awkward to use. It really basically just felt like spamming deflect was the most reliable way to play. The bosses are actually pretty enjoyable comparatively but the third one basically just dodges and spams projectiles which made her by far the most annoying part of a pretty brutal game. The whole idea behind the aging system is really cool in theory, especially with how it ties into upgrades and seeing your characters appearance change. But that "in theory" part does a lot of heavy lifting for me. Sifu is a pretty rough game despite its short length and since you only have basically 10 lives before having to restart you'll end up replaying each of the five levels to beat them with a better age making this game basically almost a rouge-lite. It does a neat thing where if you put more exp into an upgrade you have you can permanently unlock it for future runs which is cool but this facet of gameplay was just not enjoyable for me. Maybe i got filtered but the combat didnt seem fair enough to make me wanna smash my head against a wall and keep replaying the first two levels a million times and I actually ended up dropping this game for quite a while.

And then it got an update! New difficulty modes, new modifiers, new challenges. Always love when games add new ways to expand your playtime especially when its for free. Student difficulty is basically the "easy mode" of the game. I'm not sure exactly what it changes about enemy health and player damage but the main draw of this for me was that the death counter now only goes up by one, so instead of having ten lives you have more like fifty. For me this was the optimal way to play. Student difficulty is still no joke and i got my ass kicked a lot, particularly by that annoying boss i mentioned earlier. But not having to participate in all the level replaying made this a much smoother experience and I'm glad this game gives you as many options as it does.

The visuals are also really nice. The art syle is pretty basic but it does some really cool stuff with it especially when it throws in some more surreal things. Each of the five levels are unique and have fun little references to movies like Oldboy and Kill Bill Volume One. It all works great. The story is there... its not meant to be anything more than an excuse for violence and thats all it needs to be. Now to actually see the credits in this you need to get the true ending which can be done by sparing all the bosses. This really doesnt add much to the game though as it really just gives you a new cutscene but I did it anyways to feel like I actually beat it. There's also some collectibles you can get which do interconnect between the levels. It's kinda fun to get all these and find the different shortcuts throughout but most of the enjoyment for me was just getting the silver trophies for it lol.

Overall, Sifu is a really sleek and fun (even if you might need to tweak it a bit) game. It may not blow you away but with all the accessibility options there's a lot to get out of this whether you want a tought as tits challenge or to just beat the fuck out of a lot of people.

Thanks for reading y'all. More stuff coming soon I promise <3

Nancymeter - 75/100
Trophy Completion - 91% (38/43)
Time Played - 17 hours 56 minutes (i really don't know how)
Game Completion #148 of 2022
Game Completion #2 of December

I have spent many years trying to find an Ip Man simulator. I don't want a game where you go on the offensive. I want the game where trouble comes to me. I am going to sit there, one hundred dudes will do their best to punch me, they will fail, and I will make them all look silly in the process. I don't want some two-button auto-fighting combat system, I want to feel like I'm doing something.

Sifu mostly delivers! I played Absolver, I played the Arkham games, I played Sleeping Dogs, I played Overgrowth, I played Yakuza. Sifu's probably the closest it comes to being Donnie Yen. So it probably makes sense that at any point during Sifu, I probably would tell you that I'm having a fucking blast in that moment. But! I want a little more. I want more game, of course, but what I really mean is that I feel like a lot of Sifu is either undercooked or underutilized.

There are some cool scenes! If you've heard anything about the game, you've heard about the Oldboy hallway. The museum is probably my favorite area in the game between the big ink pendulum thing and the way it plays with your vision on the way to the boss. But the environment mostly feels like it's there because they need something that doesn't look like you're running through a level blockout. When they want you to play with the environments it's some of the most fun you'll have with the game - the museum exhibits, all the clutter in the high-rise level, the parts of the nightclub where you're allowed to interact with objects. The game really wants you to only use weapons when they deem fit though, judging by the barren combat corridors that exist all throughout the game. Some of these encounters would be a little more interesting if I could be more inventive with how I use my environment outside of a couple rooms.

Weapons are a little weird and I wish they found a better balance with them? They can be fun when the enemies pose a threat and you're actually forced to use them wisely, but I only really feel like these are used to full effect against bosses - catching kunai that a boss is throwing at you and airmailing it back to its original sender is as satisfying as an entire fight all on its own, but more often you are either given one or zero weapons when fighting a boss. Sure, that's fine, design decision, that's cool. But it's weird that it comes immediately after a level where I had a bat in my hand the entire time because almost every enemy in the level had a bat or knife, and I could replace my weapon 4 times over before the first one would've broken.

I also feel like the upgrades are missing something. I probably only used 30% of the upgrades in the game intentionally, and that includes both the statue upgrades and the skill... totem pole? It feels like the developers want to extend a hand to you and offer you the chance to make incremental, permanent progress, but these upgrades feel mostly meaningless. There are a couple moves/combos you can use to cheese your way through a boss but there's no real reason to do so if you want Sifu's combat to retain its charm.

Bosses are Sifu's biggest strength. They feel like this is what the game was meant to be about, which is why it's so weird that there's only five of them. The lead-up to each boss plays with the environment, and four of the five encounters are actual, real skill checks. Each of them will slap the soul out of you if you don't understand the skill they're testing. It's effective teaching, and each boss makes you better at the game overall when you need to go back to previous levels and beat them at a younger age. I do think the game would benefit from having more difficulty options, because the bosses seem to assume that you've played the way I did and only do the bare minimum until the game tests you on a skill - button mashing until the game demands you actually defend, blocking until the game insists that you learn how to dodge, etc. People who mastered these early (or learn quickly) are going to cruise through the game much faster. It really leaves me wishing that there were more bosses that tested you on multiple things at once, or forced you to adapt a bit more. No boss tests your positioning against multiple enemies, none have any real mixups. If any Sifu DLC ever gets released, I hope that it includes some endgame bosses that really, truly test the player who's able to make it to the end.

Lastly, I don't want to undersell the fights against standard, non-boss enemies. The fights against crowds are mostly a joke to begin with - it's what allows that Oldboy reference to actually resemble the movie - but they become a genuine thrill as special enemies are mixed in. Unlike the Arkham games, where special enemies are more of a nuisance than anything ("spam dodge until you get a chance to press The One Button That Kills This Kind of Guy"), special enemies in Sifu feel like a welcome challenge. They apply additional - but not overwhelming - pressure to the player, forcing you to change the way you defend to create new opportunities to attack while still keeping up with the rest of the mob. I enjoy doing the entire museum level all over again (despite having the shortcut) just so I can do the last chunk before the boss where they confine you to a small area while mixing in a bunch of dancers and grapplers.

There's a lot to like here, but I wish the environments and enemies were more alive OR more varied. Its gameplay scratches an itch for me that Absolver never did, being a little bit faster with a lower skill floor (while still making progress towards the skill ceiling feel meaningful and exciting). I really hope Sloclap decides to do more with this system, no matter what form it takes.

Enjoyment - 9/10
Difficulty - 4/10

Sifu is a knuckle sandwich. Sifu is a time machine. Sifu is a ticking time bomb. Sifu is a fighting game.

Sifu could possibly be the best single player fighting game ever made. I hold this game on such a pedestal because I truly believe we will regard this game as best-in-class in the not too distant future. If not Sifu, then the games directly inspired by it that improve its foundations.
🏆

Now that I am thinking about it, I will make a long-form review of Sifu because there is a lot to unpack here. I'll come back to this and give a timestamp for future reference. [18/04/2024]

I was a big fan of Absolver though the school system isn't as traditional as pressing square and triangle like Sifu has. Sifu makes you feel like a kung fu master from the moment you press the first takedown animation and that's a good testament to the game. At first, you get your ass beat a lot until you start to learn parry timing and what attacks to avoid. Repetition is key in this game as by the time I got to the final boss, I truly felt like I mastered the game enough to take on the challenge.

I like this game a whole lot - got the platinum in the first week of release, have gone back to it pretty regularly, and I'm having a lot of fun trying to nail all the goals they added with their most recent update. Reminds me of God Hand in the sense that when you're doing everything right and operating on the power of Ultra Instinct it's extremely hard to imagine anything more satisfying. However all of this is ruined because one of the trophies is called "The 36th Chamber of Kung Fu", and is awarded for performing every type of takedown in the game, which to me implies a level of mastery. The 36th Chamber was not for masters, it was for complete laypeople not part of the temple to begin their training. Watch the movie!!

It's fun, it's challenging and cool. But I feel a lot of the difficulty comes from the garbage sauce tutorial. Did you know you can dodge 99% of all attacks with ducking? (spacebar -> S) and the sweep attack ( S -> W -> Heavy attack) is your most powerful tool. Once I figured these out around level 3 the difficulty dropped significantly. Also, it doesn't really feel like a roguelike. If that's what it was going for, then it is the most generous and kind roguelike ever made. The shortcuts and it saving your game are two direct opposites of the genre. But it's fun and cool, so it's alright. It just feels more like an old-style game where you had lives, except the lives system is more complex and cool. The aging is my favorite part of this game but also the source of most of my frustration. The last thing before I go... the sound design is bad and garbage. Punching a dude sounds like tapping your fingers on a moist log of wood. Music was sparse and I thought that was interesting, but I actually got way better when I played Eminem. I'm serious. It's eerie I put it on, and suddenly I was in the zone. Eminem was like AndI'mstilltotallyinappropriatewithanopiateGropingitwhileI'mholdingitlikea trophyI'mhopingalittlecodeine'llgetmeOD'in'WhoaeverythingisslowIbegintofloatingIknowthatI'mgettingloadedthepenexplodedHiroshimawiththe flowsautopiaWiththedopeI'manOGI'mliketheG.O.A.T.heretogetyourgoat littlebitofsodiumit'sassaultWhenI'matthepodiumatyourthroatholycamoly and Im like ip man watah haiya dodging ducking under bam bam bam leroy smith rapid fist duck counter block sweep throw like god damn!!!!!! when the game works, it works very well.

If the idea of doing a no hit run in Sekiro appeals to you, you will like this game, if not, you will likely find yourself exhausted by this game.

I think what I found most frustrating about this game is that you very, very rarely have anything to celebrate/be proud of. Almost every time you beat a boss, there's a sense of anti-climax because you know you'll almost certainly have to go back and do it all over again, but better. It leads to a fairly punishing and demoralising game. Again, if you have a desire to do the same thing over and over again, making incremental progress every now and then, this game might be for you. Otherwise, you'll likely become demotivated and exhausted.

A pleasing art style that shines as you progress to different levels and the locales drastically change, great animation work, well-designed combat, and an awesome difficulty curve that weaves in ways that you can make the game easier, but never allows any of them to become sturdy enough of a crutch that you can see the game through (and through again for secret content) without actually increasing your skill as a player.

Learning Sifu's combat feels like learning an actual skillset. I began the game wondering if I'd ever beat the second level, and by the time I ended it, I was spending precious special attack meter on a move that gently smacks enemies on the back of the head as a taunt. It's a wonderful feeling.

Its one of those games if you're REALLY used to other action games, muscle memory can fuck you up. Especially when dodging is concerned.

Memorizing patterns is a bit of a must to master combat. Alternate between weaving or parrying. Whichever suits you best.

Pretty neat when you get used to it. Really does look like an action movie when you're good enough to make a consistent flow.

Can't say I care much on how upgrades are handled. Not a big fan of dumping 1,500 exp 5 (kinda 6) times in a row for a small counter after a dodge. It's unique, I'll give it that. But its not something I'd want in other games.

Thankfully, checkpoints are really generous. Even if you restart the level, the game saves all your unlocked shortcuts. Bad if you don't have enough upgrades but it's your choice to take the risk.

All 'n all, its pretty neat. VERY punishing at first but rewarding. Flawed but still solid.

Also I like how I can spare the bosses to get the good ending but not long ago I keep slitting some mook's throat. But those lives don't matter.

When I started planning out my next run through the game while I was stuck on the final boss, I knew I was in. When I started looking up the utility of individual moves and philosophy behind Wude, I knew this had jumped to becoming something very special for me. It took a long time to get here- the joke being that it took the game being sold as a beat ‘em up for me to pick it back up again (thanks Raph!), but I’m glad I did.

One of the most telling things for me was when I started considering it alongside some of my favorite games: Thought a lot about ZeroRanger and the way it secretly primes you to see the appeal of going for a one-credit clear- and the basic logic of the death counter serves a similar function, getting you to really take note of your successes and failures as you plot out the best way through each of the levels: Take a shortcut, even if it means missing a few helpful upgrade statues, or try your hand at some of the tougher encounters, where you might take some extra deaths but end up improving chances of success long-term.

It’s a great tension, something that keeps the appeal of a 1CC alive over multiple levels, though I think some levels capitalize on it better than others- the third stage is the obvious standout, with immediate access to the boss and complete control over which encounters you want to pursue. Out of all the levels, it’s the one where those questions change the most on each new attempt, debating the merits of trying to hit every Shrine in order to best prepare for one of the toughest fights in the game. It’s a spike in complexity and difficulty that I don’t think the game is ever able to quite match again, and between it and the incredible production of Stage 2, as you flicker in and out of reality, I’m sort of inclined to say that the game peaks by the halfway point- though the latter half is still excellent, and further speaks to the way the systems here bolster so much of the action.

Even a fight that might seem inconsequential in the moment has ramifications that can really spiral outwards: what weapons you used, how much damage you took, whether or not you used your Focus meter and now have to build it back up again- and with the ability for some enemies to activate a more powerful second form if you perform a takedown on them, even the simplest interaction in the game carries some considerations with it. So often with action games, I find you need to set some intrinsic goals for yourself- the reality being that playing the game as-is never really pushes the mechanics far enough. I feel like I’ve spent more time on the structure of Sifu than on the granularities of combat, but that’s partly because it’s the framing of these mechanics that really pushes the game over the edge.

The game’s unusual cohesiveness reminds me a lot of Inaba discussing Hideki Kamyia’s directing- that the quality of his games wasn’t just the result of raw talent, but time and effort and a wide variety of inspirations. Reading on Slo-Clap’s variety of influences, from arcade games to martial arts cinema to drawing from the experience Pak Mei experts, it’s hard not to see Inaba’s sentiment borne out here as well- just a remarkable amount of consideration for everything here.

Some stray thoughts:

- I have no basis for this, but I feel like the destructible physics objects were something that someone fought like hell to keep, and if so, I’m totally glad they did. Running around and breaking chairs is legitimately one of the high points of the game- maybe made all the better by how measured the game is otherwise.

- The Arenas mode reminds me a lot of what originally liked about the Streets of Rage 4 DLC, a complimentary mode that’ll keep the game evergreen. Especially like the way cheats and gameplay modifiers are added to some of the scenarios, really distinguishes the fights from one another and shows a side of the game I’d never opt into normally. I think the biggest compliment I can pay the mode is that, when I needed a break from Sifu, I just played Sifu: Arenas.

- Camera is far better than most action games, with certain objects in the environment going transparent for the sake of clarity, but the few moments where it lapses feel far more devastating (especially given the penchant for being cornered in Sean’s arena) given the penalty for failure is so high- Oni once again reigns supreme among 3D action games with its camera design.

- And this is intensely pedantic, but I spent a lot of time wondering if the aging mechanic should have been framed a bit differently- I love the idea of becoming a wise old master, but in practice, getting that old is normally a sign of a lifetime of chronic screw-ups. Something that tapped into the sense that you were unnaturally re-animated, like the corruption of your character in Shadow of the Colossus, becoming more pallid and deathly over time (and as an added bonus, it could work as another cinematic reference in a game full of them- add The Crow to the list!), but at that point, when I’m workshopping some alternate way of visualizing these systems, it’s probably more a sign of how deep in I am than some major fault of the game.


All that said, there’s not really a clean way for me to close this out- I told myself I could only talk about the game if I could clear it at under 50 years old, but in doing so, I realized how little of the game I could really speak to- terrifying for the purposes writing on it, wonderful for the realization that there’s so much left to uncover. In a genre full of games with unspoken caveats and that hint at what could be, Sifu ends up being something remarkably fully-formed, unusually complete.

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References:

But instead of being some genius with ideas coming out of thin air, it’s more due to his nature and he gets ideas from a lot of different places and inspiration from diverse things and he thinks about things for a long time… his process needs space.

- Producer Atsushi Inaba, discussing Hideki Kamyia’s directing style, From 1UP

Both Oldboy and The Raid were inspirations for the design and art teams working on Sifu. In general, the game is filled with references and inspirations from many action & martial arts movies, such as John Wick, Sha Po Lang/Killzone, and Tom-Yum-Goong/The Protector… There were many different inspirations and references for the team, but for gameplay two good examples are Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice as well as God Hand on the PS2.

- From a Q&A with GameRant

The style we are focused on for Sifu is the Pak Mei style. Jordan (our creative director) and myself, as well as others in the studio have various backgrounds in martial arts but Jordan specifically trained in the Pak Mei style. We’ve worked closely with a sifu here in France to make sure the details of the Pak Mei study are represented accurately in the game. There’s so much history and nuance across all of the styles but we’ve been super inspired by diving deep into this one for Sifu.

- SloClap Executive Producer Pierre Tarno, on the martial arts depicted in the game, From mp1st

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Some additional resources on the game:

How to enjoy Sifu (thanks Ziad!)

Sifu - Why you should use... Charged Backfist

Sifu’s a kung-fu beat ‘em up that has a stance based combat system similar to Sekiro, where learning to dodge and parry attacks is essential to overcoming difficult enemies and bosses. And just the same, it’s very unforgiving until enough time is spent getting used to its levels and mechanics.

In addition there’s a roguelike element to it where each death will make your character older. Giving you greater damage but less health until you get too old to fight and have to start over, losing the progress of the level and any skills up to that point that haven’t been unlocked permanently. Initially I wasn’t sure I would like this as losing significant playtime is the one thing that can be a turn off for roguelike games, but in practice it’s much more tolerable.

Aging carries over to the next level, and starting over will only set you back to the start of that level with the same age. And since the game has shortcuts, you can retry and just skip through much of the level if you’ve already reached that point before.

But because the combat gets more complicated as you progress, it’s encouraged to go back through prior levels and try to pass them without dying to maintain a young age (for more lives) up to the final level. And it’s worth it as I kept replaying and gradually improved more and more until I was flying through them with minimal deaths all the way to the end.

I really liked the art style too. It’s like a mix of cell shaded characters and environments with realistic looking lighting, and some of the locations are very cool like the third level.

I did have some issues though. While the combat’s very enjoyable, I’m not sure it was as tightly designed as I would’ve liked. Parries and dodges can feel inconsistent with different enemy types, and it can be a bit too hard to telegraph some attacks especially with bosses.

There’s also a story here, but it’s not really fleshed out enough to take notice. Your father was killed and you take revenge by going after the ones responsible. That’s about it really, you get some information about the characters through a detective board but they don’t have much substance to them beyond the premise. The focus is mainly on their designs and fights though so I didn’t mind.

Had a ton of fun with this. When looking at its five levels altogether it’s actually a pretty short game, but the amount of time you’ll spend trying to master each one adds a lot of replayability to it.

Didn't beat it, this is more of a first impressions than a review.

The game is very solid aesthetically, but the punitive system goes against that. Unless you grasp some fundamentals, you're going to be replaying the same levels over and over again. All the stings, dings and tiny interactions get lost in the rush of go-go-go. You've seen it several times already, and even the most beautiful of things lose their luster when experienced more than necessary.

Swaying is the baseline element of the battle system, around which all else is built. It restores your Sekiro-esque balance gauge, gives you a score multiplier and is the most reliable way of staying safe, as the i-frames are rather generous. Its economy is built around having to do mostly the same kind of sway while throwing in an occasional unusual one to keep you on your toes, though none of this is very well tutorialized. Once you grasp this, you can start playing with the more general mechanics like using terrain to your advantage, armored moves, crowd control etc. You can't stay too comfortable though, as crowds can make short work of you - they don't have the courtesy of coming at you one at a time, so you will have to think about positioning or throwing out something expendable, like the concentration super-moves.

Having gotten better at the game and clearing several levels in a session one after another when they used to give me so much shit is a sensation I can genuinely thank the game for, but whether I will love it again whenever I come back to it, or if it crumbles at my feet to grind and bullshit is a question for the future.

A solid, if somewhat unpolished brawler, Sifu takes familiar cues from various contemporary melee combat systems and combines them with arcade-like elements.

Within the first hour of Sifu, it's hard to deny how brutal it can get, with enemies actually making use of their numbers advantage rather than attacking you one at a time, and the omission of visual cues that are usually present in similar modern melee-based games. The death mechanic may also give an impression it's something you have to grind through and unlock things so you can stand a chance through each run, but if anything Sifu actually does reward the player more by being observant and patient rather than just grinding for XP unlocks.

The unlockable skills are there to serve more as extra options to open up your playstyle rather than a necessity to get through the game. They will help a fair bit, and prioritizing certain upgrades give a notable effect, but you actually can get farther by playing it safe and focusing on the game's flow and mechanics, in particular, the 'structure gauge'. The closest familiar comparison to this is the 'posture gauge' from Sekiro, and it does work similarly here. Attack and deflect an enemy's attack enough times, you build up the posture gauge to go for an instant execution.

The rest of the challenge comes in the form of getting familiar with each enemy's attack patterns and animations and knowing when to use the appropriate defensive measures. Your tools for defense come in the form of blocking which is safe but costs you your own structure gauge, parries which is a somewhat riskier but more aggressive approach as this continuously builds up the enemy's structure gauge, and dodging which you can do high and low dodges. Dodging, in particular, can be both the safest and riskiest defense at the same time, as successful executions don't cost you structure, but the wrong dodge can make you eat an attack directly.

The game isn't all defense of course, especially with the aforementioned element that enemies actually do take advantage of the fact they outnumber you in each encounter. They will flank you and catch you off guard if you tunnel vision on a single one. Thus it's important to balance out defense with aggression. Prioritizing certain enemy types, taking the first opportunity to attack, using weapons, and so on.

Sifu is also stylish and is good at making you feel like you're playing through a kung fu flick. The larger and more open areas, in particular, are also great in emulating the martial arts film the game pays a lot of homage to, as the flow of these parts lets you vault through various furniture and make use of weapons as you try to whittle down groups of foes. There are also neat little details that extend as gameplay mechanics too, with enemies being able to attack each other, giving you more incentive in dodging their attacks.

Unfortunately, not all of its presentation works in its favor, for one the camera actually manages to be a nuisance in certain areas, obscuring enemies off-screen and prompting you to get hit by a thrown bottle you have no way of anticipating for example. There are also moments where you're forced into really tight spaces as well as darker areas where it's harder to observe your surroundings.

This extends as well to the responsiveness and playability of the game, with Sifu taking priority in blending its animations realistically rather than consistent feedback. There are moments, especially with boss fights where deflecting and dodging just feels off, with a noticeable delay to your actions. They're not bad to the point of breaking the game, but they can get really annoying and add an unnecessary learning curve to adjust to.

Speaking of boss fights, they're also not the best in terms of design. Each boss has two phases, and each phase has a set of attacks they constantly rotate with depending on their health and distance. They're fine on paper, but the way they're executed makes them feel padded out and more annoying to fight over time. Figuring them out is fun, doing them over and over without variation for a few minutes straight as you build up the necessary gauge isn't. The game would have benefitted more from this either by giving more attack variations or lessening the necessary amount of attacks you need to defeat each boss.

The often advertised mechanic of dying and aging also feels very underwhelming. The fact that it only adjusts your health to be lower and damage to be higher is limiting by itself, but those things don't even feel significant either in actual gameplay. Especially in consideration that as you progress through each stage, enemies deal more damage and also take longer to defeat both through health and structure gauge, thus canceling out really any potential benefit or change of playstyle through the aging. I feel like this mechanic could have worked better with exclusive moves or upgrades through certain ages for example.

Despite its shortcomings, Sifu does provide a challenging yet rewarding experience and is a good example of how you can mix arcade-style difficulty and progression with modern gameplay mechanics.

Plus it's hard to not enjoy a game that has a crotch punch.

First of all, I gotta thank my local coffee shop for the clutch brew. Made me all focused and hyped up and stuff. With the power of caffeine, I just spent an incredibly fun 5 hours, tightening my gameplay skills and getting enough powerful abilities, in order to set up the one run that will be enough to carry me all the way to the end. Ended up beating the final boss at age 44. Lots of room to improve, but I'm happy with it for now. I just want to gush about this wonderful game for a bit.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the art direction of this game is kinda underrated. The soft painting-esque look of the game is pleasant enough on its own, but the game continuously impresses with the kinds of environments that it introduces as it goes on. Not to mention how surreal it can be sometimes. The game is not afraid to break reality and move beyond it to create absolutely stunning moments. The boss fight in the 3rd area is an absolute highlight in this regard.

Now let's move on to the juicy meat; this game's melee combat system is simply impeccable. There's definitely a lot of learning and practicing to do on your own before the system truly clicks, but once it does, it's so exhilarating. My personal favorite part of it is learning how the defensive mechanics work. Dodging, deflecting, parrying, and avoiding; all separate moves with their own use cases and benefits, but the game demands you to master them all, in that order. It's a highly rewarding feat, when you have studied the enemies' attack patterns enough, and you know exactly what to do in order to achieve the outcome you want. My favorite combo so far is avoiding or parrying an attack, pushing them with the palm strike, and pummeling them with chasing strikes; it's the kind of offensive manuever that I associate with Asian martial art movies the most, and it's so badass.

So, the fundamentals of the game are supremely solid. But what makes this game truly special is the intricacies of its accessory systems. You only can get new abilities from Shrines that are spread in all the levels, and they have certain requirements: being below a certain age, or requiring a set amount of score/XP. You can just use the level shortcuts to avoid fighting too many enemies, and just focus on the boss fights, while skipping some Shrines because of it. But you can do the opposite, and be rewarded for your efforts; I got enough abilities to make all the weapons in the game last much longer and hit much harder than normal, especially with bladed weapons, and it wouldn't happen if I don't take the scenic route. This meta aspect of the game is a big, fun puzzle that only strengthens the game's core qualities.

There's also some smaller quirks and features of the combat that I find really fun to learn. For example, learning that doing enough takedowns will randomly turn an enemy into a "fired up" state, and avoiding these mighty obstacles by resisting the extraordinarily strong urge to do a takedown in the first place; their animations are so fun to watch! It's so hard to resist sometimes. Not to mention the fact that they make you invincible for the duration of the animation, so you can do them to avoid getting hit by another enemy. Another example is abusing the environment to your advantage, like pushing an enemy from a ledge, or pushing them to hit a wall. It's far more situational, but still useful enough to give you the extra edge if you are aware enough to execute them.

The boss fights deserve a spotlight of their own too. All of them are challenging affairs that properly test your skills, while also pushing you to plan things out to make things easier. For example, finding a way to carry a weapon to the fight. The final boss fight is noticably harder than the rest, and is much more skill-based since one of your powers is completely handicapped, which was kinda annoying at first. But I realized that this design choice adds so much depth and replayability to the rest of the game, since the game asks you to optimize your gameplay in every other level leading up to it, to give you enough cushion and leeway to prevail in the final fight. In that way, this boss fight isn't just about mastering this one opponent, but also mastering the game itself.

Lastly, the presentation of this game is clean af. The camera moves during the takedowns, the sound effects of all the punches and kicks, the aforementioned art design, and so on: they all unite to form a beautiful, confident, and distinctive look and feel.

I want to give this a perfect score, but I'm holding out until I see more of the extra content. I do, however, have the confidence to say that this game is the absolute peak of melee combat gaming. Easily an all-timer game for me, too.

Boy, my fingers hurt.

Sifu's premise is a (deliberately) simple one. As a child, you watched your master be killed in front of you and now must dedicate yourself solely to revenge, armed with your fists and an ancient talisman capable of reviving the dead at the expense of increasing your age with each use. Been there, seen it, got the t-shirt.

Joking aside, the threadbare story here isn't as much of a hindrance to the overall experience as you might believe. Much like the Hong Kong action cinema classics that inspired it, it's a fitting foundation for the fast-paced, "easy to learn but hard to master" combat that Sifu is built upon. Each level is centered around a basic objective: make your way through the level, beating up underlings along the way, until you reach the head honcho and take them down in a lengthy boss battle.

That premise might sound familiar to fans of souls-likes but Sifu really doesn't share many similarities with those games, other than being balls hard initially until you can get a handle on the flow of combat and enemy encounters and can feel like a real kung-fu master as you breeze through the levels with (relative) ease. Much like those games too, it is very rewarding as you try to best your previous times and abilities to unlock Sifu's roster of temporary and permanent skills to take with you onto the next arena.

What I did actually appreciate is that those skills don't necessarily make the game easier; they just give you a lot more options to deal with enemies if you find yourself in a bind. No matter how much you upgrade yourself, a random mook could catch you in a string of poorly-timed parries and take you out just as easily as a boss can, meaning you have to stay on your toes in Sifu pretty much at all times, which can be fun and rewarding but incredibly exhausting too.

That said, there is a noticeable lack of enemy variety in Sifu. You could argue that it's for the best since keeping enemy types to a minimum can help you focus on the appropriate tactics and moves for that level's boss but it does feel like you're going through the motions to get there sometimes. One would expect each new level to bring with it a slew of new enemy types mixed into ones you're already familiar with but it's pretty much the same few on repeat.

Sifu does struggle with its camera sometimes too, especially in tight spaces. There's a moment in the first level that mimics the infamous hallway fight scene in Park Chan-wook's Oldboy and the camera temporarily switches to a sidescroller view. It's a cool, satisfying homage, and yet the camera only does something like that once through the whole game. In other circumstances, when you're pushed up against a wall with not much wiggle room, it's tricky to see enemy attacks being telegraphed and you can find yourself trapped in a combo unwittingly.

Lastly, Sifu features an investigation board adorned with information about each of the 5 bosses you must take down throughout the game. Through each level, you will find scraps of info or keys to various locked rooms, some of which are for previous levels that can occasionally help with shortcuts if you want to bypass several rooms full of enemies. It has its uses; however, it mostly exists for lore purposes and is largely superfluous to the gameplay. Since there are very light dialogue systems interspersed throughout Sifu, one would expect the items you find to open up new avenues of conversation; however, that is not the case, leading to the investigation board being mostly present for set dressing purposes and not much else.

Regardless, Sifu is a fun and engaging yet exhausting but rewarding game with some great level design, music, and, of course, excellent combat. Lack of enemy variety, camera issues, and a superfluous investigation board feature hold it back from getting that coveted IGN 10 from me, but it's no less a real winner for you combo perverts out there who go weak at the knees at the sight of a 'moves list' at the pause menu.

8/10

Inicialmente, o que tinha me chamado atenção em Sifu (Além do nome), era a qualidade das animações, mas nunca cheguei a ver tanto sobre o jogo, e acabei ficando com a impressão de que seria mais um jogo legalzinho pra pegar vez ou outra pra passar o tempo e ver umas coisas legais na tela, mas nossa, é muito mais do que eu imaginava, não só é um dos melhores sistemas de combate modernos, como também é um jogo genuinamente importante de se existir, trazendo um pouco do arcade de volta para os jogos modernos.

Um resgate ao passado

Superficialmente, a forma que Sifu funciona lembra um roguelike, você vai pegando upgrades a cada run, alguns podem ser permanentes, e você tem que reiniciar o jogo algumas vezes. Mas não é bem assim que funciona, e na real isso lembra muito mais jogos arcade do que roguelikes, o próprio sistema de idades demonstra muito bem isso: a cada vez que você morrer, você pode continuar em troco de aumentar a sua idade, mas com isso, seu dano vai aumentando, sua vida vai reduzindo, algumas habilidades vão ser travadas pois só podem ser adquiridas antes de certo ponto, e você não pode passar dos 70 anos, tendo que reiniciar o level caso aconteça. Claro, não é exatamente assim que os jogos funcionavam no arcade, mas é inegável que esse sistema tem uma certa semelhança com o sistema de ficha, já que basicamente o que você está fazendo, é oferecendo algo em troca de continuar jogando. Assim, Sifu traz um sentimento parecido com o arcade, é muito sobre otimizar rotas, dominar sistemas e decorar os levels para que você consiga chegar até o final oferecendo o mínimo possível em troca para continuar jogando. Com isso, Sifu acaba sendo para mim uma tentativa de resgatar a estrutura do arcade, a reimaginando para padrões modernos da mídia e que pode agradar mais os jogadores atuais.

O treino incessante

Muito de Sifu gira em torno de masteria sobre seus sistemas, o funcionamento do combate é meio que uma mistura de jogos de luta - exigindo mixups, prestar atenção em ataques altos e baixos, e conhecimento amplo do kit do personagem - com Sekiro, com um sistema de parry que funciona de forma bem parecida, porém, com um uso um tanto diferente, já que o combate de Sifu não funciona de forma tão rítmica quanto Sekiro. E acaba que muito do jogo é um treino constante para que se obtenha a otimização dos levels que comentei antes, exigindo sempre que você esteja pensando constantemente na sua melhor opção no momento e como usar a situação a seu favor, te dando diversas opções em todo momento, como alterar sua hitbox com algum ataque específico, pegar iframes finalizando algum inimigo, usar algum objeto do cenário, jogar algum inimigo contra a parede, arriscar parry, desviar do ataque, manipular o posicionamento dos inimigos para evitar que você seja atacado por vários de uma vez, etc. E não só o combate gira muito em torno disso, como a própria narrativa também, que eu vejo como um metacomentário sobre curva de aprendizado e o próprio resgate da cultura arcade que mencionei. Em certo ponto do jogo, você vai ter que jogar tudo do 0 denovo, mas o jogo vai cobrar um pouco mais, com um teste de autocontrole que dificulta ainda mais as bossfights. Assim, toda essa nova tentativa vai colocar novamente em teste se você realmente conseguiu otimizar bem o suficiente suas rotas, se você realmente conseguiu administrar bem o suficiente os seus movimentos e o sistema defensivo do jogo, e se você consegue ter controle sobre suas ações ou está jogando mais por instinto. Tudo isso culmina muito bem no final, que recompensa diretamente o seu aprendizado de uma forma que não irei comentar tanto por motivos de spoiler.

Uma breve conclusão sobre a importância de Sifu

Por mais que os arcades em si tenham perdido relevância, essa cultura sempre esteve e sempre vai estar presente na mídia de alguma forma, mas é algo que vai sendo cada vez mais deixado de lado em prol de uma tentativa de alcançar mais feitos tecnológicos e cinematográficos, e por mais que seja uma abordagem válida também, é sempre bom ver jogos que buscam resgatar um pouco dessa cultura de forma mais direta, isso traz maior diversidade para a mídia e traz a tona novos estudos sobre game design. A existência de Sifu me deixa feliz justamente por buscar essa preservação, e espero que mais abordagens como essa surjam na mídia.