Structurally there's a lot to praise with Sifu's combat system, where the chief goal seems to have been removing the gameplay-ish abstractions usually found in these types of brawlers without going full Exanima physics-sim. Though Batman is clear in the blueprint, positioning and the environment are much more key to Sifu, as knocking opponents into walls or structures in the level severely harms their posture. Fights that take place on stairs can be harrowing for this reason. Your kit is also quite granular, with dodging having separate inputs for cardinal directions and attacks emphasizing where you and your opponent end up or what direction you face more than discrete clear states. When it works, Sifu really works. The balletic motion of a martial arts fight scene is brilliantly configured to the controller, and it feels amazing.
There's just, however, a lot of little problems with Sifu's combat design that prevent it from reaching the outstanding heights that are possible. Most notably, the dodging system. The games Sifu is most clearly emulating, Sekiro and God Hand, both have extremely clear audiovisual feedback for what "types" of attacks are incoming. Sifu has more defensive mechanics than both of these games combined (five dodges, a block, and a parry), and in its variety of viable defensive moves, the decision of what to use gets super muddy. This isn't a problem for most of the game, where simple avoidance works, but from Stage 4 on, the game becomes much more pattern recognition focused, relying on memorizing the exact positions of long attack strings without much clarity on what they're doing. The parry itself also feels super weak and unsatisfying, similarly lacking clear audio or visual feedback. This also bleeds into the enemy designs. I don't think this game lacks enemy variety, but apart from the large fat enemies, it's really difficult to clock what type you're dealing with even when the camera isn't pulled out into diorama mode, and this further muddies the rhythm of dodges and parries necessary to keep up as the game goes on and stages get longer.
Story and visual-wise, not a ton to say here. The one interesting note to the straightforward revenge story is how the true ending resolves things, which is pretty neat. It's the only Western game to really engage with kung fu as a philosophy ans not just a cool looking way to kill people, and it ties in with the gameplay of extracting satisfaction from repetition and execution really well. It looks fine, animations are great and stages are varied but it's nothing mind boggling
There's just, however, a lot of little problems with Sifu's combat design that prevent it from reaching the outstanding heights that are possible. Most notably, the dodging system. The games Sifu is most clearly emulating, Sekiro and God Hand, both have extremely clear audiovisual feedback for what "types" of attacks are incoming. Sifu has more defensive mechanics than both of these games combined (five dodges, a block, and a parry), and in its variety of viable defensive moves, the decision of what to use gets super muddy. This isn't a problem for most of the game, where simple avoidance works, but from Stage 4 on, the game becomes much more pattern recognition focused, relying on memorizing the exact positions of long attack strings without much clarity on what they're doing. The parry itself also feels super weak and unsatisfying, similarly lacking clear audio or visual feedback. This also bleeds into the enemy designs. I don't think this game lacks enemy variety, but apart from the large fat enemies, it's really difficult to clock what type you're dealing with even when the camera isn't pulled out into diorama mode, and this further muddies the rhythm of dodges and parries necessary to keep up as the game goes on and stages get longer.
Story and visual-wise, not a ton to say here. The one interesting note to the straightforward revenge story is how the true ending resolves things, which is pretty neat. It's the only Western game to really engage with kung fu as a philosophy ans not just a cool looking way to kill people, and it ties in with the gameplay of extracting satisfaction from repetition and execution really well. It looks fine, animations are great and stages are varied but it's nothing mind boggling