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Sifu keeps its earlier promises as an easy-to-pick-up, hard-to-master modern beat ’em up, though many players will feel starved for content.
Sloclap’s new martial arts brawler Sifu is lean and mean. Lean in the sense of its total runtime and span of content, mean in terms of its generally merciless challenge. Built on a combat engine which prompts surprising variety despite keeping its input complexity minimal – a far cry from the studio’s previous cult-classic Absolver in this sense – Sifu is fairly straightforward in what it requests from the player, and presents its narrative with pathos, conviction, and verve. It’s an obvious grab for beat ’em up veterans looking for their next fix, but it’s hard not to expect more from the overall package.
At its heart, Sifu is a revenge story that incorporates the tropes and tendencies of martial arts cinema with a healthy dollop of fantasy. The player chooses either a male or female avatar to pursue the killers of their family eight years prior, amassing a “detective board” of clues and lore leading to each target and occasionally unlocking shortcuts within levels. While the game’s five chapters must originally be completed in sequence, revisits to previous ones are also available, with some caveats.
To explore the exact systems of character growth and age/failure would probably take up the rest of this review (we’ve previewed these Sifu aspects before as well) but suffice to say that these under-the-hood mechanics are more esoteric than competently presented or managed. As players get killed in-game, their age goes up but keeps them in the fight, with each consecutive death hastening the process, increasing damage, and reducing health, though “lives” can be regenerated in certain instances to slow the burn.
This is the incentive to replay chapters, improve the overall playthrough result, and progress through the game even younger. Luckily, Sifu’s minute-to-minute combat is usually an absolute blast. It’s very parry-centric – comparisons to FromSoftware’s Sekiro are unavoidable in this regard only – with individual “structure” bars for players and enemies that leave them dazed upon breaking, opening them up for quick kills. Furniture can be vaulted across, cornering is key (and an often deadly circumstance for the player), and most encounters feature scattered weapons to compete for against roomfuls of enemies.
Even Sifu’s lowliest combatants can pack a wallop if unchecked, and groups of surrounding enemies love to interrupt concentrated attacks on their kin. They’re also fairly differentiated and diverse, so players will need to learn and anticipate certain tougher encounters to finesse them in later attempts. The five bosses are predictably brutal but surmountable, each with their own tricks and always showcased against an impressive backdrop.
For better or for worse, Sifu’s encounters are scripted to the last letter. In other words: the same eight enemies in a room will always be in the same spot every replay, and competency with Sifu’s combat leads to quicker and deadlier fights through practice and memorization. That’s the largest portion of the gameplay loop itself, though a few purchasable upgrades which require extensive replays to accumulate helps grant a feeling of slight progress after unsuccessful attempts as well.
Each chapter boasts a radically different color palette, musical arrangement, and theme, and the game’s bold animated presentation is consistently beautiful throughout. The museum which houses the entirety of chapter three deserves special mention; cavernous modern art installations are a terrific setting for a brawl, and every section features a surprise or visual treat. It’s genuinely one of the best and most memorable game levels in years (and yes, the Oldboy fight scene is just as fun as it looks).
Sifu‘s soundtrack is also superb and carefully molds around each sequence, with infectious motifs combining live instruments with synths and drum machines. Sound design overall is just as strong, and the audio and responses through the particularities of the PS5 DualSense controller are very well implemented; it rumbles with the rain, prompts a shatter sound on guard break, and dramatically echoes a creaking door before a boss fight, all successfully adding to player immersion.
Sadly, earlier concerns about Sifu’s playtime and breadth of content prove out in the finished game, and even a late-stage twist only superficially lengthens the experience. There are no alternate modes, variations on level design, pure boss-rush option, or even complicated training simulations to play.
Earlier impressions on Sifu’s camera issues have not been resolved either, and getting cornered by enemies would be less punishing with a more sensibly directed viewable angle. For beat ’em up fans starved for new games to play, Sifu remains an obvious recommendation. Even those taken by its copious charms will want for more after they’ve seen it all, however.
Sifu releases on February 8 on the Epic Games Store for PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. A digital PlayStation 5 code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.
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