Yo. Today, I'm doing to be going over a game that was designed to make you want to slam your keyboard or controller down onto your cock, for feeling like such a filthy scrub. It's called Sifu. This game was developed by Sloclap, a french game studio. And, genre wise It's a mix between being a roguelike and an action/beat em' up style game. Which I think is a pretty interesting combination that hasn't been done before. I know there's been dungeon crawler beat em' ups before, but, I think this is a first of this kind of genre blend. If I'm wrong, feel free to call my ass out in the comments though. Something I'd like to point out as well before I go into the game is I see a lot of people comparing it the Soulslike games. It is literally nothing like those games at all. Just because a game is really fucking hard, does not equal that it's dark souls. A game can be fucking hard without being a soulslike game, dawg.
Anyways, lets get into it and talk about Sifu.
The game is very difficult to play, it's by far one of the hardest I have touched in a long time. However, it has a lot fun, unique gameplay mechanics that focus around martial arts. The game itself is a very unique experience, in my opinion. One that was pretty damn entertaining, although pretty short lived. I went through and got each ending in the game and finished it out in about 10ish hours. So, it's a short but sweet type of game, which I'd probably harp on a bit if it was a full price title. But, considering the game is only $39.99, I think it's more fair that it has a shorter amount of content to consume. Though, I might also be looking at it from a different angle. As, some people might end up sinking 20-30 hours into the game before they finish it. Either way, I feel like the value is there for the price for how much game there is to actually jam on.
I can see a lot of people rage quitting while playing this game. In fact, I'm one hundred perfect confident that has already happened a shit ton with streamers and content creators. This game is going to put you to the limit for sure, but, it never does it in a way that feels like bullshit. The game feels pretty fair for the most part, though one mechanic which does kind of screw you over sometimes is the camera angles. Those get a bit wonky for some reason, and can piss you off a bit when they get stunlocked into a wall and you end up eating some damage from enemies. It's never a huge issue though from my experience, so I think it's one thing that most people can get over and not be tilted about.
The combat in the game is very reminiscent of the old Arkham batman games with the way it uses free flow combat. When you get into the flow of doing some nutty combo's, it feels extremely smooth and fun. But, it does play entirely different than how the old arkham games worked, so it has sort of a brand new feeling to it while you play. There are breakable melee weapons that you pick up as well to change up combat and give yourself an advantage, though they don't tend to last very long. There's also a skill system where you can unlock new abilities/attacks, most of which are pretty cool and useful. Though, there's a few shit ones in the game that seem entirely pointless beyond just trying to cosplay being a pimp from 1978 or something. So, you can definitely tweak your combat style somewhat to your own liking.
So, here's the really unique system feature of this game, which puts it into the roguelike category. When you die in the game, you get the option to revive yourself where you just died instead of restarting at a checkpoint, or having to restart from scratch. However, every time that you revive yourself you come back older. So, if you go down when you're 20 years old, when you come back to the spot you just died at you'll now be 21 years old. It also keeps stacking so the more that you die, the more that you age at once. So, if you go down at 40 years old, when you get back up to slap some cheeks you're going to be 43 years old. You can reduce the stacking by defeating powerful enemies. But, it continues on until you're 70 years old, and if you die at that age then you have to restart all the way from the beginning of the game. Because, this isn't an old kung fu flick where a 74 year old man can slay some fat ass. I really enjoy this mechanic of the game and think it adds a lot of fun to the game and makes things interesting. Especially because your damage/health changes depending on what ages you're at.
Another big part of the combat in the game is the parrying system. You're going to be relying on parrying a shit ton, especially with later boss in the game. The timing with parrying is very specific, meaning you're going to have to practice a lot to get it nailed down. You can also use a dodge system, but, it cannot save you from taking damage every time and is not nearly as useful in my opinion. Either way, with some of the enemies in the game doing large amounts of damage if they hit you (especially with melee weapons.) you're gonna have to rely on these mechanics to stay alive. The parrying in the game is probably going to be the most frustrating part of playing Sifu. So, don't stress yourself out if you suck dick at it at first. It took me a long time to really feel like I was getting it hammered in. So, just stick with it. While the game is very challenging, it's also very satisfying and fun.
The art design and level design in this game is fantastic. There's a lot of vibrant colors used in the game with neon lighting, which I absolutely love. There's also obviously a lot of asian style backdrops used that are pretty fun to look at as well. A lot of the levels in the game I feel like are nods to Martial Arts movies of the past. I might be pulling this out of my ass, since I can't be sure this is true. But, there's a level for example that reminded me of the hallway scene in Oldboy with how it was designed and how the fighting goes down. There's also a level that reminds me very much of the Red Circle club in the first John Wick film, where I feel like it must be a reference or homage in someway. So, definitely some bonus points to the game here either way, as I really dig the designs for the way the game looks.
The narrative of the game is probably its weakest point, honestly. Everything feels very underdeveloped in my opinion. I think they were just trying to keep everything as lean as possible with the story to keep the focus on the gameplay, which I suppose is fair. But, I was hoping for some kind of story to hook onto and enjoy with this game. And, I just didn't get that. It's a very bland revenge story that just happens to have a small mystical element to it with your revived aging mechanic. At no point do you ever feel anything about the people you're hunting down. It's just a part of going through the motions, basically. I don't think it's the most important thing ever for this type of game. But, it would have been nice to actually care about the characters or story in some way.
Overall, however, I really enjoyed the game. It doesn't have a great story or anything, but, it has some compelling combat mechanics that you haven't experienced anywhere else. It's going to be a bitch of a game to finish, but, it's not impossible and it doesn't really try to butt fuck you in some unfair way. There are some items you can pick up during subsequent playthroughs that help you skirt through areas and save time as well, which can help ease frustrations when starting over from scratch. The game is really pretty with some cool references, and I just had a lot of fun with it. So, I'd definitely recommend it. Even at the full price of $40. So, yeah.
That's about it, my doods.
Until next time! Later!