Sifu is a tough but fun kung-fu fighting game dripping with inspiration and references to all the classics from Bruce Lee movies, Oldboy, Kill Bill, etc. When everything is going right this game feels amazing to play. I just wish the game focused more on the fun yet challenging stylish combat and not what I can only describe as trying to be like dark souls. To pull off dark souls difficulty without feeling unfair your combat system has to be super polished and tight, Sifu misses this mark.
There are a number of boss fights and other encounters that just feel unfair or cheap to play. Instead of relying on fast twitch reflexes and well timed counters you have to go into pattern recognition mode or find a guide online for the easy way to beat them and that's just not fun... Especially when enemies do like 10x more damage than you and don't have to deal with the somewhat cumbersome controls. Block, up dodge, down dodge, and parry all being tied to the same button just causes problems sometimes. And the lack of easily identifiable audio/visual cues to determine what type of attack is coming your way makes it even harder to manage the proper defense. This creates a scenario I'm sure pretty much all Sifu players hit at some point where they have to backtrack to master earlier levels to make sure they aren't a senior citizen by the time they get to the endgame.
What starts out as a really interesting mechanic where every death ages you giving benefits and detriments as you age, turns into a grindy annoyance where you keep running through the same levels over and over again in hopes to add as few years to your counter as possible before progressing. This turns the aging mechanic into almost a grading system and forces you to play like a completionist trying to get an S rank on every level so instead of it being fun or even tactical it becomes tedious and annoying. This could have been fixed by simply making sure the combat was always fair and not leaning into the pattern recognition mode. I feel like the default difficulty should have been right in between easy and normal because I found normal to be frustrating and a chore to get through, but easy was just way too easy. This is mostly due to the fact that on normal dying once or twice isn't a big deal, the real pain comes when you die a bunch of times back to back on one boss. You can easily add 10-15 years on one botched boss fight.
Luckily most of the truly annoying stuff is towards the end of the game, the first couple of levels were really fun and really scratch that kung-fu movie itch that made me want to try the game out. I really hope developers realize that not every game has to be super difficult and unforgiving like dark souls to be fun... And this is coming from a fromsoft fanboy.
There are a number of boss fights and other encounters that just feel unfair or cheap to play. Instead of relying on fast twitch reflexes and well timed counters you have to go into pattern recognition mode or find a guide online for the easy way to beat them and that's just not fun... Especially when enemies do like 10x more damage than you and don't have to deal with the somewhat cumbersome controls. Block, up dodge, down dodge, and parry all being tied to the same button just causes problems sometimes. And the lack of easily identifiable audio/visual cues to determine what type of attack is coming your way makes it even harder to manage the proper defense. This creates a scenario I'm sure pretty much all Sifu players hit at some point where they have to backtrack to master earlier levels to make sure they aren't a senior citizen by the time they get to the endgame.
What starts out as a really interesting mechanic where every death ages you giving benefits and detriments as you age, turns into a grindy annoyance where you keep running through the same levels over and over again in hopes to add as few years to your counter as possible before progressing. This turns the aging mechanic into almost a grading system and forces you to play like a completionist trying to get an S rank on every level so instead of it being fun or even tactical it becomes tedious and annoying. This could have been fixed by simply making sure the combat was always fair and not leaning into the pattern recognition mode. I feel like the default difficulty should have been right in between easy and normal because I found normal to be frustrating and a chore to get through, but easy was just way too easy. This is mostly due to the fact that on normal dying once or twice isn't a big deal, the real pain comes when you die a bunch of times back to back on one boss. You can easily add 10-15 years on one botched boss fight.
Luckily most of the truly annoying stuff is towards the end of the game, the first couple of levels were really fun and really scratch that kung-fu movie itch that made me want to try the game out. I really hope developers realize that not every game has to be super difficult and unforgiving like dark souls to be fun... And this is coming from a fromsoft fanboy.