Sifu, and how practice makes perfect. A very aged review

There's a funny story as to how I found Sifu. I first discovered this game when I saw some speed-runners play through it on YouTube. And because of the game's silky smooth combat, those speed-runners managed to turn the game into what can best be described as an interactive action movie. So naturally, I wanted to try the game for myself. It was more difficult than expected, but it's still a blast to play.

A quick content warning before we begin. Sifu is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. Because of violence and profanity. That's it. And it's mostly the profanity that gave the game this rating. All things considered, this is a rather tame example of an M rated video game, and it most likely could've gotten away with a T for Teen rating if the regular enemies didn't swear like sailors while fighting you. But either way, reader discretion is advised.

Official box art of Sifu, featuring an unnamed protagonist that I will refer to as the Student going forward. Image found on wikipedia.org

But what exactly is Sifu? It's an indie action game developed and published by Sloclap and H2 Interactive, released on February 8th, 2022 . Heavily inspired by martial arts action movies like Kill Bill, Karate Kid and The Matrix, Sifu is a game with a remarkably simple concept. You play as an unnamed but customizable Kung Fu student on a quest to avenge their Sifu (Chinese word for "teacher") by beating the snot out of a crime syndicate called the Dawn Group. That's it. That's the entire story. 

There's no plot twists or esoteric lore in this game. Don't get me wrong, what story this game does have is decent, but the dev team's main goal was to make the best Kung Fu game ever, and everything else was secondary to that goal. But I'll summarize what story there is anyway. Just a heads up, I'll be referring to this game's protagonist as the Student. The character does not have an official name, as previously mentioned.

Before the game begins properly, we get a prologue in which we play as Yang, the main villain of this story. Yang was a disgraced Kung Fu student who sought out forbidden techniques, and was exiled as punishment. But now, he has returned to his old dojo for revenge. Yang has the same move set as the Student, but he is completely invincible during the prologue and has every upgrade unlocked. 

This tutorial is doing a lot of cool things at once. Firstly, it shows the player how dangerous the main villain is by letting you control his rampage firsthand. Secondly, because Yang is an overpowered evil version of the Student, this opening doubles as a preview for the kind of power the player will eventually have at their disposal. Thirdly, it lets you know that the game will end with a confrontation between the Student and Yang, because how else is this story going to end?

The prologue ends with Yang murdering the Sifu, and ordering his gang to execute everyone else in the dojo. Not even the Student is spared from this purge. "But wait!" you cry. "If the Student dies during the prologue, how does the rest of the game happen?" You see, there was one thing Yang didn't consider during his quest for revenge. 

Right before Yang arrived at the dojo, the Student stole a magic talisman that can revive the dead. After getting crossed off the census by the Dawn Group, they were brought back to life by said talisman. That talisman's magic is the in-universe explanation for how the player is able to retry levels after getting a Game Over. 

The game does an 8 year time skip, as the Student finishes their training and becomes a self-taught martial artist. But despite 8 long years passing by, the Student still has only one thing on their mind: Vengeance.

The Student prepares to fight some thugs at a nightclub. Image found on Steam.

Sifu has five main levels to play through. Now I know that sounds like a short experience, but it's not. It took me about 20 hours to beat the game for the first time, plus an additional 15 hours to get the game's secret true ending. This is because of the game's main feature; Aging. You see, that talisman that protects the Student from death has some stipulations to its usage. 

Every time the Student revives, their body ages by one year. Every time the Student ages, the player's health bar gets a little bit smaller. While it is true that the Student's damage output rises as they age, the steadily shrinking health bar turns the benefit into a net negative, as your room for error gets smaller with each subsequent death. Additionally, the talisman's magic is finite, and the game will end if the Student dies while above the age of 75 years. At that point you have no choice but to restart the entire level from scratch.

Aging also affects the Student's appearance, for obvious reasons. While you can customize the Student to an extent, such as choosing their gender or their outfit, there are some things that cannot be changed. Their face and hair color are always set in stone in order to best illustrate the aging process. With each revival, the Student's skin starts wrinkling, and their hair gradually changes from black to white. 

The aging effect is admittedly more obvious on the male Student than it is on the female Student. In addition to the aforementioned changes, the male Student will start growing a beard that gets progressively longer as he ages. The female Student lacks a beard for obvious reasons. But the female Student makes funny Bruce Lee style battle cries while using her techniques, which I find to be oddly charming.

More importantly, whatever age the Student was at the end of the current level will be the age they start at for the next level. For example, if you finish the first level at 30 years old, you will start the second level at 30 years old. If you finish the second level at 40 years old, you will start the third level at 40 years old. And so on and so forth. Which means if you want to stand a chance against Yang, you need to stay as young as possible. And the easiest way to do that is to replay levels that you already cleared so you can break your record.

One last thing about aging. How much the Student's body ages upon revival is determined by how many times they died in that specific level. The first death ages you by one year, the second death by two years, the third death by three years, and so on. Defeating powerful enemies (marked by a golden glow) will lower the death counter by one. Keep in mind that this part of the aging mechanic is only relevant on higher difficulty settings, as on Student Mode (equivalent to easy) all deaths age the Student by one year with no exceptions.

Sifu's main mechanic is that the Student ages slightly every time the player is defeated. Die enough times and the Student will become an elder, as shown here. Image found on Steam.

Combat in Sifu is grounded, yet stylish. Of course, there's your genre standard abilities like Light attacks, Heavy attacks and blocking. You can mix and match Light and Heavy attacks to perform different combos. More complex techniques can be performed by flicking the left analog stick (or your system's equivalent thereof) in specific directions while pressing one of the attack buttons. For example, flicking the left stick "up" then pressing Heavy attack makes the Student do a leaping kick forward.

Then there's Focus Attacks, which are powerful techniques that cannot be blocked or dodged by enemies. Think of Focus Attacks as your super moves. Unlike regular attacks, Focus Attacks need to be charged up using an energy called, well, Focus. The Focus meter fills up either upon attacking enemies or upon successfully dodging and parrying enemy attacks.

Dodging and Parrying are your main defensive tools. While blocking attacks normally will mitigate damage to your health bar, it will also fill up a meter called Structure. The Structure meter is very obviously inspired by the Posture meter from Sekiro. It's an orange meter at the bottom of the screen that will stun the player's character if allowed to fill up all the way. The idea is that this meter exists to punish an overreliance on regular blocking. 

And also like Sekiro, parrying an attack (performed by tapping the block button right before impact) will not break Structure, and will instead inflict Structure damage on your opponent. If you successfully break an enemy's Structure, the Student can perform a Takedown attack, which will instantly KO that enemy and heal the Student. This is the only way you can heal mid-battle.

Dodging restores your own Structure, but you need to make sure you dodge in the right direction to actually avoid the attack. All enemy attacks are divided into three categories, those being High Attacks, Low Attacks and Throws. High and Low attacks can be blocked and parried, but Throws must be dodged. High attacks consist of any technique that hits the Student from the waist up, while Low attacks are anything that hits from the waist down. In order to dodge properly, you need to hold the block button and then flick the control stick in the opposite direction of the attack (flick down for High attacks and Throws, flick up for Low attacks).

The Student can also grab enemies and throw them around. And throwing is arguably the best trick in the Student's arsenal. You can throw enemies into walls and furniture for extra damage. You can throw enemies off of ledges to take them out of the fight instantly. You can even throw enemies into each other to break up big groups and give yourself more breathing room. 

Throws are your friend, and the whole game becomes much more manageable once you understand how throws work. The only restriction on throws is that an enemy can only be thrown if it was stunned beforehand. The easiest way to stun an enemy is to dodge or parry one of their attacks and counter with an attack of your own.

In addition to using Kung Fu to fight, the Student can also pick up certain objects in the environment and use them as improvised weapons. These can include mundane items like broomsticks and glass bottles, or more dangerous tools like machetes and daggers. Attacking with a weapon will almost always deal more damage than attacking barehanded, but weapons will eventually break from overuse.

All of these abilities come together to make a combat system that makes the player feel powerful from start to finish. Outside of the talisman that revives the Student, there's no magic in this setting. So all those fancy Kung Fu techniques you can unlock can believably be done by a real life martial artist. That's what I mean when I say the combat is ground yet stylish. And when you practice enough with this combat system, you will feel like a true Kung Fu Master.

Sifu has five distinct enemy types, each with their own behaviors and attack patterns. Some basic enemies use simple 3-hit combos, others use weapons and alternate between High and Low attacks to confuse you. Others still try to Throw you around. On their own, these enemies can be defeated with some decent parries and combos. But they're rarely ever alone, so you got to get used to fighting multiple enemies at once.

Sifu does have a training mode where you can practice against any enemy or boss you have encountered before, in order to learn how to properly dodge and parry their attacks. It's a nice quality-of-life feature that lets you practice against a specific threat without replaying the entire level. 

The Student (right) can be customized with different outfits. You can also play as a female variant of the Student, if you want. Image found on Steam.

The Student can also be upgraded with EXP, rewarded every time the Student defeats an enemy. These upgrades can take the form of increased Structure, improved weapon durability or even new combos entirely. Keep in mind that most of these upgrades are temporary, and will reset if the Student dies before the level is complete.

If you want to make an upgrade permanent, you will have to keep upgrading the same thing repeatedly. Practice makes perfect, after all. Also, the Student can only learn a combo as long as they stay within a certain age group. Some combos can only be learned if you're 40 years old or younger, for example. This restriction seems excessive at first, but it encourages you to get good enough to where you can stay below an age threshold long enough to permanently learn the combo in question. And half the fun of Sifu is getting good enough at the game to where you can unlock everything permanently and breeze through the levels.

Side note, the Student does get some dialogue choices in each level, but they don't change the story in any meaningful way. This is a linear action game, after all. Most of these dialogue options consist of telling enemies to get out of the way, telling enemies to get out of the way but politely this time, or some kind of one-liner. 

Funnily enough, there is nothing stopping the player from attacking instead of talking, so you can sucker punch an enemy mid-conversation to take them out of the fight instantly. I find the dialogue choices to be an odd inclusion, as this is clearly not a story-driven game nor is it an roleplaying game, but the ability to sucker punch enemies mid-conversation is always amusing.

At the end of every level is one of the five leaders of the Dawn Group, who serve as the game's bosses. The Dawn Group leaders all have more elaborate attack patterns than normal enemies, and most of them have unbreakable weapons that cannot be dropped at all. There are two stages to every boss, with the first stage being a normal martial arts duel. The second stage, however, activates an elemental artifact, giving the boss new abilities and even transforming the entire battlefield.

The hardest boss by far is the third one, Kuroki the Artist. Her attacks are fast, have long reach and are difficult to parry. And unlike the other bosses, who only gain one or two new attacks upon activating their elemental magic, Kuroki completely changes her weapons and fighting style. So instead of fighting one boss, it feels like fighting two bosses back to back. Even after beating the game, I never got good enough to beat Kuroki without dying at least once to her.

The Student using a bo staff to fight Sean the Fighter, one of the game's five bosses. Image found on Steam.

My favorite boss is actually the second one, Sean the Fighter. In fact, his level, the Club, is my favorite level in the entire game. The Club starts off as simple night club, but transforms into an ancient Chinese fortress with Kung Fu cultists waiting to ambush you around every corner. Sean hits hard, but almost all of his moves are High Attacks, so it isn't hard to parry or dodge his blows. Despite Sean being a fairly easy boss in a vacuum, the Club is by far the longest level in the game, easily taking over 40 minutes to complete. So the real challenge is reaching Sean with enough health and youth to survive in the first place, rather than anything Sean himself does.

Once you defeat the first four members of the Dawn Group, you will be allowed to challenge Yang. Like I said earlier, Yang has the exact same move set as the Student, just with every possible upgrade active at once. It is a grueling battle, but the Student can eventually put him down. 

But here there be spoilers. Admittedly, this is not a game that people play for the story, but what I'm about to say is still a spoiler. I consider Sifu to be a 4 star game. It's not for everyone, but those who enjoy martial arts media or fluid combat will love this game.

The Student realizes too little, too late that revenge wasn't worth it. They spent so much of their life laser focused on enacting their vengeance, that achieving victory over the source of their hatred feels hollow instead of relieving. The Talisman rewinds time and gives the Student a chance to forgive and forget. This leads to the path of the "True" ending.

So now you have to play through the whole game again, but this time, you have to spare the lives of first four bosses. This can be done by breaking each boss's Structure twice without using a Takedown, which shows that you could have killed them, but chose not to. This leaves the Dawn Group leaders humbled and perhaps humiliated, but it gives them all the wakeup call needed to atone for their sins and redeem themselves. 

You can also find documents and notes hidden throughout the levels that reveal the Dawn Group isn't as bad as the Student initially assumed. The entire reason Yang sought out forbidden techniques was because his wife and son died, and he wanted to use the talisman to revive them. The Sifu refused to help Yang at all when he was mourning, despite having the ability to revive his family. That's the reason why Yang murdered the Sifu in the first place. These notes don't excuse his actions, but it explains why he did what he did.

But you know that saying, "An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind?" By seeking out revenge against the Sifu, Yang set the Student down the path of vengeance as well. Only by sparing the Dawn Group leaders can the cycle of vengeance end.

An elderly Student sends a poor soul flying with a bo staff strike. Image found on Steam.

Unfortunately, this does make the Student looking somewhat hypocritical in a way that probably wasn't intended, as they continue to beat the snot out of regular enemies only to show mercy to the bosses. But the Student works on Batman logic, no matter how badly the Student beats someone up, that person can and will survive it. But if you apply real life logic to this game's fight scenes, then yeah, all those gangsters and security guards should be straight up dead.

Anyway, if you spare the Dawn Group leaders and fight Yang again, you get an extra stage to his boss fight. During this new stage, Yang steals the talisman that the Student has been using to revive themselves, so now it's a "fair" fight. And to add insult to injury, Yang then hits the Student with the exact same technique he used to kill the Sifu. The Student just barely survives it, and despite their injuries, they manage to defeat Yang again. The Student spares Yang's life, but dies of their injuries shortly afterward. 

But that's okay, as showing mercy to the Dawn Group allowed the Student to achieve a form of spiritual enlightenment called Wude. The last scene of the game is the Student becoming a Sifu and opening up their own dojo, thus passing their knowledge and wisdom onto the next generation. The implication being that Yang revived the Student with the talisman after feeling moved by their display of strength and mercy in equal measure.

Overall, the story is serviceable. But as mentioned before, it's completely overshadowed by the fun combat. Like I said, the devs were trying to make the best Kung Fu game ever, and the story was mostly an excuse to justify all the fighting. But in my personal opinion, having good gameplay is more important than a good story, because the gameplay is your main method of interacting with a video game. This isn't to say that video games shouldn't have good narratives, obviously, but it's easier to sit through a fun game with a lackluster story than it is to experience a good story held back by mediocre game mechanics.

After beating the game for the first time, you unlock the Challenges, optional post-game battles with some fun gimmicks. Some of these challenges are direct homages to the very same action movies that inspired Sifu. But most of them are brutally challenging, far more difficult than anything in the five main levels. Some Challenges are timed battles, others reduce your health bar so much that any attack will end you. Others still force you to fight enemies with infinite health that can only be defeated by throwing them off ledges. One challenge requires you to fight all five Dawn Group leaders in a row with no chance to heal. Your rewards for completing the Challenges are new outfits to customize the Student with.

In terms of presentation, Sifu has a distinct, cel-shaded art style. If I had to compare it to something, I'd say the art style reminds me most of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, just with less exaggerated body proportions. The main highlight of the visuals however is the choreography. All of the Student's animations are based on real Kung Fu techniques, and in fact, Sloclap even enlisted several real life Kung Fu masters to provide the motion capture used in this game's animations. And the Student flows from one attack animation to another smoothly and seamlessly, with no wasted movements.

The result is that when you get good enough to clear out entire rooms of enemies, you will feel like an Kung Fu master yourself. And what's especially impressive is that no matter how many enemies you face or where in the level you're fighting in, the action is always clean, coherent and legible. Heck, the combat is so good that even watching someone else play it is fun, as this game is basically an interactive martial arts action movie.

The Student slides across a table while avoiding a bat swing from an enemy. Image found on Steam.

The levels themselves are distinct and easily recognizable at a glance. Heck, even the lighting in all the levels is color coded. The Squats use a lot of earthy tones like green and brown. The Club uses neon purple lights that gradually give way to fiery reds. The Museum is home to calming blue artwork that hints at the boss's backstory. The Tower uses metallic colors like silver and gold. And the Sanctuary is a peaceful dojo with off-white coloring.

One fun detail I like is that the clothing worn by enemies changes to match the setting of the level. The Squats are populated by filthy gangsters with torn-up clothes. The Club enemies are all partygoers dressed to have a good time. The Museum and Tower enemies are all sharply dressed security guards. And the Sanctuary enemies consist of Yang's own students, clad in snow white robes.

In terms of sound design, it's also distinct and memorable. Every sound effect is clean, crisp and accentuates every punch, kick and weapon strike. The music is a mix of traditional Chinese instruments and modern techno, depending on the level. It speeds up and slows down in accordance to the action on screen, which is a neat attention to detail.

The voice acting is fine, but nothing mind-blowing. Most of this game's dialogue consists of standard enemies taunting the Student and panicking once the Student starts throwing hands. But every Dawn Group leader does get to say to a pre-battle one-liner during their boss fight. The Student surprisingly has dialogue. Not a lot of it, mind you, but they aren't a silent protagonist.

This is mostly referring to the English voice acting. You can switch to one of two different Chinese languages in the settings, either Mandarin or Cantonese. I never played with either of these languages enabled, but the option is there if you want it.

Overall, Sifu is an excellent action game. Is it perfect? No. Like I said, the story is merely "okay" and the voice acting is just "fine." But the combat and levels are so fun that it elevates the whole experience, not to mention the spectacular art style. If you love martial arts, this is an easy game to recommend. I give Sifu four stars out of five.

Sifu is the property of Sloclap and Kepler Interactive. None of the images used in this review were created by me. Please support the original creators.