From the very first hit, Sifu is absolutely uncompromising in design. Absolver developer Sloclap's latest martial arts beat 'em up is bold, its combat exquisite, its animation superb, its music outstanding, and its story poignant and elegantly told. It's unforgiving and full of frustrating moments. But in the end, Sifu offers an almost unparalleled sense of mastery and accomplishment.
The Murder in Sifu
Like so many vengeful martial arts stories, Sifu begins with a murder. Your father and martial arts master is being killed right before your eyes. It serves as both an excellent tutorial and a taste of what the future holds for you, as you have full access to the entire catalog of unlockable moves. Eight years later, you embark on a journey to kill each of the five people involved.
Sifu's new way
Martial arts beat 'em ups are one of the oldest genres in video games, and yet even in its long history, there's nothing quite like Sifu. In many ways it serves as a throwback to the days when life limited games had to be made or continued. Except that in Sifu your life doesn't decrease with every death, instead your age increases as you get closer to the end of your lifespan, forcing dug to survive the initial phase and have enough lifespan left to complete the rest of the game. This premise makes Sifu a uniquely punishing but also immensely rewarding experience. Combat in Sifu is extraordinary and utterly exquisite, featuring some of the finest motion-captured martial arts you'll find in video games, with seamless animation, incredible authenticity, and brutal impact with every strike.
your goals
It's a very simple premise, but it's beautifully executed. You start off with very little information about your goals, but as the campaign progresses you begin to discover who you are and what you're about by collecting clues and evidence in each level. You find yourself uniquely motivated to seek out each of them, not only because of the additional lore and context they provided about the main character's quest for revenge, but also because it could potentially open doors in earlier levels leading to entirely new stages would lead. Also, the way new information is added to a detective board that shows how everything connects is a nice touch.
Kung Fu
Sifu's martial arts are quite simply among the best. While the camera does get crammed into the corner at times, making it hard to see what's coming, it's otherwise difficult to find many faults. Can't say enough good things about how fluid the animation is, how each hit lands with bone-crushing impact, which is emphasized beautifully by the tactile feel of the DualSense controller when you're playing on PlayStation 5, and how every single counter looks natural, never mind what angle an attack is coming from or what type of punch is being thrown. This is just a superficial talk; mechanically, it's just as impressive.
Combos
There are two attack buttons that you can switch between for a variety of combos, each with their own specific function. The Guard button is for blocks, parries, and swings; a button to skip objects in the environment; a button to pick up weapons; a button for throwing weapons; and a focus button that lets you use a variety of unblockable special attacks with their own effects, all tied to a focus meter.
environmental struggles
While the hand-to-hand punches are great, what really sets Sifu apart from other beat-em-ups is its use of environmental combat. Stunned enemies can be thrown down stairs, through barricades and even over railings to kill them instantly; Weapons can be thrown straight off the ground in a thug's face; and there are all sorts of contextual takedowns that seamlessly integrate your environment into their animations. Aside from being damn cool, it all offers a strategic advantage, and some fights that initially seemed utterly impossible become a lot more achievable as you explore the space and look for ways to use your environment to your advantage to use.
The defensive options
But more than anything, it's the defensive options that really make Sifu stand out. Similar to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, there is a Structure Gauge that regulates the guards of you and your enemies. If you block too many hits, the structure gauge will break and you will fare badly. To avoid this, you can hold down the block button and move the stick up or down to dodge high or low attacks. Waver is ideal when you know an attack is the final hit of a combo, as it gives you the opportunity to counterattack and even opens up the opponent for a directed throw, but also risks timing it wrong or going the wrong way Select . Finally, you can try to parry an attack by tapping the block button right when it's about to hit. Parries are great because they stop an opponent's combo and open them up for a counterattack or throw, but they require super precise timing, especially with those highly damaging power attacks that most bosses love to use.
The enemy AI
It's great that the enemy AI in Sifu is aggressive enough to really force you to master these deep defenses. They don't just hang around and wait their turn. They'll leap in with Superman punches, try to surround you, throw bottles across the room, jump over bar counters and smash you with an ax kick, and generally put up a very tough fight on all levels. Sloclap finds that really nice balance where the enemies are just about predictable enough, where you can learn to spot specific combos coming your way and plan a defense against that first hit, but there's also just enough variation in their attack patterns , where you can be surprised if you lose focus.
The age in Sifu
On paper, Sifu is actually a very short game. Its five levels can be completed in just a few hours, even when starting a new save file for the first time. The way Sifu deals with death is truly unique: with the help of a magical talisman, you can revive yourself right where you fell and keep fighting, but if you do, you'll age as many years as yours current death counter stands. While your first few deaths might only age you by a year, two, or three, you quickly find that if you keep going to die for the same enemy or boss, you'll age by five, six, seven, or more. The only way to lower it is by defeating some specific and heavy enemies, which of course has its own risks of increasing it in the process. Aging isn't just for show either. Each time you turn 10 your maximum health will shrink, but you will still do slightly more damage as your body becomes more frail but your skill and experience increases. Once you reach 70s, your talisman's magic is depleted. The next time you die, it's game over.
Level or all new?
This is where it gets tricky though: you can restart a level and try again, but you'll keep the skills, age, and death counter of your best playthrough from the previous level. So if you narrowly missed the second level boss at age 65 with a death count of five or six, you will be 65 every time you restart the third level and for the rest of the campaign only have two lives left unless you manage to drastically reduce your death counter, which isn't easy. Obviously, that's not an ideal scenario. Basically, this means that beating just one level is not enough. You have to beat the level and have enough lifetime left to be realistic about everything after.
Repeated levels
This is the only pain point in Sifu's design: much like a roguelike, it requires you to play levels repeatedly until you basically master them. But unlike a roguelike, there's no procedural level generation or random loot to reduce some of the repetition associated with playing the same levels over and over again. You always have the same weapons, the same enemies and the same bosses to deal with. Sifu's handcrafted levels burst at the seams with creativity and style, especially at those points where each level deviates from the confines of reality and into the realm of the surreal. However, the emphasis on repeated playthroughs is at odds with how static everything is, leading to some tiresome replays.
Abbreviations
Luckily, there are shortcuts that you can unlock on later playthroughs, so you rarely have to replay an entire level. At a certain stage, you can actually fly straight to the boss when you've fought them for the first time. But in other cases, like the second level in particular, you still have to play through 10-20 minutes before you even get a chance to try the boss again. Also waiting for you in the game is an excellent dynamic soundtrack, a cool way he uses ambient sounds from the controller's speakers, and his beautiful watercolor art style.
capability calculation
You start Sifu with all the skills you need to finish: a handful of basic combos, a sweep that can knock down enemies, a grab on downed enemies that allows you to perform two quick punches and pick them up again. You use your feet, shoving enemies away from you, and performing a conspicuous focus attack. In addition to these basic abilities, when you die or whenever you find a shrine that offers a variety of buffs that you can purchase for that run, you have the option to add new abilities to your repertoire to give you situational advantages . These include options like the ability to intercept incoming projectiles, a counterattack that can be performed while you're down, or a ducking punch that lets you duck under a high attack to smack an enemy square in the crotch .
Lost Skills
The catch is that all of your skills will be reset to zero when the game is over. There is some ongoing roguelite-style progression though, as you can make a skill a permanent part of your loadout once you've bought it a total of six times. So, each run, you'll have to decide whether you want to spend your points on an ability you really need for future games, or if you want to spread your experience around to give yourself the best possible chance on that particular run.
The progression system
Sifu offers a well-designed progression system, given Sifu's unique take on death and his focus on replaying his levels. But at the same time, most abilities are so situational that you'll often spend hard-earned XP on an ability you never get to use, or an ability that never really provides a new solution to a problem. Having that duck-and-ledge swipe move is cool, but it feels redundant when you can already duck under attacks and counterattacks to stun an enemy. There are a handful of exceptions, but many other abilities follow suit as they are cool attacks that aren't really any more useful than your core abilities.
Conclusion
Sifu asks a lot of you, and that's a sword that cuts both ways. Its combat is impeccable, with incredibly smooth and impactful animations, deep combat mechanics, and challenging enemies that will really make you fight tooth and nail for every victory. At the same time, the repetition that comes from replaying levels to essentially get you a high score and give you a chance to complete the rest of the short campaign with a single consistent pool of lives can lead to some really frustrating moments. What makes sense is a clear path through trial and error until you get better at it, which can be frustrating. On the other side of that vicious learning curve, however, is one of the most impressive beat 'em ups, with excellent level design, fantastic music, and when it's all over - a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that few other video games can match.