If you’re carrying a weapon, you’ll usually drop it after taking one or two punches. You’d think that the ability to die and come back to life would be a huge advantage, but Sifu offsets this by seemingly making almost everyone you encounter ridiculously tough. A floaty camera that constantly needs wrangling doesn’t help matters, either. In boss fights or scenarios where you’re surrounded, a couple hits you can’t avoid can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Instead of a quick backstep, too often your character will slowly rotate around like something out of the OG Resident Evil, leaving you vulnerable. You’ll need to block and dodge a lot to avoid a speedy demise, but short bursts of speed feel sluggish and gummy. Repeating the same stages and boss fights wouldn’t be so bad if Sifu’s combat felt more fair and less finicky. Perfection is the only path to meaningful progress in Sifu, and having to immediately go back and replay a level you finally cleared after a dozen attempts is pretty darn demoralizing. That means squeaking past a boss by the skin of your teeth is only marginally better than losing, because you’ll have to go back and complete each level at as young an age as possible. This punishment is compounded by the fact that your age carries over to the next stage. In practice, what this often means is the more that you suck at Sifu, the more you get punished for it. That latter part doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you’ve ever met a real-life old person, but it’s a promising conceit on paper. As you age, your ability to take a punch decreases, but your attack power increases. But the toll increases each time you fall, compounding the challenge. The first few losses won’t cost you much you’ll only go from 20 to 21 after your first demise. It would have been nice to see more of this approach in Sifu.ĭespite its straightforward approach to storytelling, Sifu has a supernatural concept as its core mechanic - your protagonist can “die” repeatedly and immediately come back a little bit older. In contrast, Sega’s Yakuza games and their spinoffs are unabashedly Japanese, tossing you ass-first into a culture you might not totally understand and trusting you’ll come along for the ride. Everyone speaks English (though Sloclap is working on a full Chinese localization to come out post-release). English-language graffiti spatters the walls. It takes place in an unnamed, generic city. Once you learn Sifu was made by a team of mostly white developers based in France, it becomes awfully hard not to notice evidence of that. But it’s also a way of keeping China itself at arm’s length. On the plus side, it spares players the blather they don’t want and foregrounds the action they do. You’ll discover lore from found objects in each level and refer back to as you progress, but the game doesn’t beat you over the head with it.Īs much as I appreciate indie studio Sloclap’s move not to overexplain its lore or wander too far down the tedious path of origin stories, I also suspect this minimalistic approach serves two ends. Much of Sifu’s story is told through the investigation board located in the hilltop muguan that acts as your home base between brawling sessions. It’s a simple, but effective way of marrying the game’s story and mechanics. You must take down each of these lieutenants on their home turf before challenging Yang himself. Their leader, Yang, has four daunting henchmen, each with titles like The Botanist, the Artist, and the CEO. Your protagonist (male or female, it’s up to you) is hellbent on revenge against the mutinous gang who rebelled against his or her father. But Sifu’s singular focus on the perfect run leaves that essential feeling of incremental progress too far out of reach. And there’s certainly an audience for that. This is a game that wants to kick you in the nuts and rub your face in the dirt, over and over again. This is not Yakuza 0 with more martial arts, where you help granny find her handbag between karaoke sessions. This was the first of many such “angry breaks” I had with Sifu.Īs is fitting for a story with a martial arts training facility and an enemies list at the center of its universe, Sifu is repetitive and unforgiving. Baby stuff, right? Wrong! For some reason it took me about a dozen times - complete with an “angry break” - to get it right. Then comes a (seemingly) simple palm strike into a down attack while the enemy’s on the ground. Silhouetted on a blood-red background, you meet your five mortal enemies while learning basic attacks and parries. I’ve never struggled to make it through a game’s opening credits - until I played Sifu.Īfter a fantastic cold open which sees you amble into a rainy mountaintop compound with an insatiable hankering to kick some ass, Sifu doles out a handful of tutorials for the game’s combo-driven martial arts combat.
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