Difficult games are a very individual matter. For someone to quickly aim at the enemy is a difficulty, but someone doesn’t worry much when going through some Dark Souls with one stick. I’ve played a lot of games in my life, some at a high level, and I don’t consider myself a very casual player. But I never perceived games as a test, they say, it’s difficult for me here, but I have to pass, and nothing else.

Games are just entertainment, and if they are not fun, there is no point in torturing yourself. In the case of Sifu, I was not able to cope with the game, especially considering that I am not very friendly with QTE. But this does not mean at all that I consider it bad or uninteresting – it’s just for the more skilled and persistent. Read the review for details.

Plot

When you were a little boy (or girl, you choose), your father, a teacher at a martial arts school, is killed by five thugs. They take your life too, but you get a magical amulet, thanks to which you cannot completely die from wounds, but with each death you become a little older. And since you can still die of old age, you have a few years to get through a whole bunch of bandits, get to their bosses and take revenge.

rules

There are five linear locations filled with evil fighters and a boss at the end. Moving along the corridors, rooms and halls, you have to hit everything that moves and try not to die, because this wastes the power of the magic medallion and you get old. It seemed to the developers that this was not enough: the number of added years after death increases by the number of your deaths, that is, if you die often, you age faster. On the bosses, you will curse the person who came up with it. For example, I curse. Fortunately, in Sifu there is an opportunity to reduce this number, plus there is a mechanic of short paths – if you find the key to the door at the location, then with repeated attempts you will be able to get past some fights.

Fighting

In order to beat enemies, Sifu has a pretty intense combat system that revolves around a few basic and unlockable moves. You get pumping points for victories, and for good finishing moves you can restore some health. You have a block, but its durability under a hail of blows quickly ends, and after that the enemies can demolish half a bar of your health with a couple of pokes.

To avoid this, there are parries: a timely pressed block does not spend your durability points, but the enemy loses them, and you can counterattack. Plus there is evasion, but with it it is more difficult to counterattack. Sounds interesting, but this is the most painful place in Sifu.

Firstly, the timings in the game are inhuman. Sometimes it seems that in terms of speed they coincide with the real blows of martial artists. Secondly, the camera will interfere with you – it always strives to swim behind your back, constantly rotates and sometimes it is difficult to see a fist flying at you behind it. Thirdly, Sifu has a very poor tutorial. At the beginning of the game, you will be shown a couple of tricks, and that’s it – go fight. For example, you won’t learn from the tutorial that enhanced fire attacks are also sometimes parried. And sometimes not, because if the timings are outrageous on normal attacks, then we can assume that they are not there at all on enhanced attacks.

Of course, there is a training room, but you can work out techniques in it, only on one simple enemy. For example, the game has a more advanced dodge technique for high and low attacks, but you will hone this skill only on bosses.

It seemed to the developers that this was not enough, so they added not very transparent damage rules. For example, some simple enemies can be knocked out with two hits of a normal attack. And others that look exactly the same, you won’t kill even from the 20th. And if this is not enough, then simple enemies can turn into something like “mini-bosses” after an unsuccessful finishing move – and now you already have two sponge enemies that need to be beaten for a long time. Add to this the fact that they usually don’t wait for you to deal with someone – if they entered the battle, then all the nearby bandits will immediately begin to strike.

Remember the scene from The Matrix when the agent dodges a lot of bullets? That’s you.

But despite all these difficulties and sometimes even button failures, Sifu has very cool and varied combat animations that turn the whole process into a dynamic Chinese action movie. Once you get on the same wavelength with what is happening, and you become a kung fu killing machine. True, a lot depends on luck here too.

It happened to me like this: I cleared the same room without a single damage, and the next time I caught a pipe in the face on the very first enemy. Sometimes one slightly out of place opponent or blocked block costs you several years of life – and it’s a damn shame when you’re just at the beginning of the level. But, again, if you get into the flow, you will feel invincible.

visual

What I want to praise the game for is the style and picture. Despite the simplicity of the graphics, it turned out to be very juicy and atmospheric. Neon streets of cities, littered courtyards of factories – everything is very beautiful. But there is a small fly in the ointment: the colors turned out to be too saturated and contrasting. After a couple of hours, the eyes begin to get tired, and it becomes painful to look at the white color of the menu. But in principle, this game is difficult to play for a long time – you will either break the gamepad, or you will go to change your burnt pants.

Verdict

Sifu is a very stylish and interesting game, but it’s not about passing, but about the process. When you manage to move with her in the same rhythm, you can feel like a kung fu master. But at the same time, it can bring you a lot of suffering and annoyance from the fact that you were knocked out by another most common enemy in two hits, and blocks and parries did not work.

But at the same time, I am sure that there are QTE masters in the world for whom this game will seem not only interesting, but also quite simple. If you are looking for a test in games, if you want to overcome and then boast that you easily passed one of the difficult games, Sifu is definitely for you. If you just want to relax after a hard day’s work – do not touch Sifu for anything. She will not reckon with your desires and mistakes.

I played on PC with a controller and was only able to get to the second phase of the second boss out of five, all in about 8 hours of trying. But I do not regret anything, although I burned notably. If you are a master of kung-QTE-fu, then the game is played in 2-3 hours.