If I had to give you a review for this game in just a few words, the following phrase comes to my mind: Martial Arts Dark Souls. This might be a bit of an exaggeration since Dark Souls has a lot of things in it that this game doesn’t, but the one thing it clearly has is an unforgiving combat system. This coupled with the game’s unique death and aging mechanics, make Sifu one of the most unique and difficult games that I have played in quite some time. Let me break things down for you one thing at a time so that I can provide you with as clear of a picture as possible before you buy this game.

You start out in the game as a mysterious figure who is searching for a box that your old Sifu has. After retrieving the box and opening it, in a very Pulp Fiction type of way, the narrative switches over to the old Sifu’s child. Managing to escape your fate, you begin to plot the downfall of those who have killed the old Sifu. There are a total of five levels with a different boss at the end of each of them. Every boss has their own set of goons and abilities that you will have to learn to defeat if you want to avenge your father before you die due to old age.

In the beginning, I said that the combat was rather brutal. In the tutorial, you get a taste of what kind of moves you are going to learn throughout the game, but they never get that brutal until about a third of the way through the first level. This is where various enemy types come out that cause you to go from feeling like a tank to being cautious about how to engage the enemies that you can see.

Stealth is an option on some enemy types, but you have to be cautious about making sure the enemy you are after can be taken down that way. In my run-through of the first level, I was only able to pull off a stealth skill twice. The second time caused a group of enemies to attack me since the body landed near them.

Now the combat system for the most part is a matter of practice-makes-perfect. You have to keep going at it, slowly learning the moves until you can get through a level with only a few deaths or you get enough experience that you can get even more special tricks to learn. Even after you spend the hours mastering the combat and leveling up your character through unlocked skills and abilities, the one thing you have to still keep in mind is your character’s age.

The older your character gets, the less health he has and the more damage he does. The maximum age is somewhere between 70 and 75. Once you hit that age, you will be given one last chance to finish a level, or it’s game over! The one caveat is that you can reverse the aging process by playing an earlier level and ending it at a younger age.

Overall, I believe that this game is a wonderful change of pace compared to most of the games that are coming out right now. The one thing that I will say is to be wary of this game if you have a busy schedule. It is one of those games where if you are not willing to invest hours learning the combat system and the controls of the game, then it will be very difficult for you to beat the game and to get that ultimate feeling of being a martial artist. This is definitely a game that I will be showing to my friends who are really into Dark Souls and those types of games.

A PC Review Copy of Sifu was provided by Microids for this review.

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Sifu

39.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Fluid Combat
• Great Graphics
• Unique Death System

Cons

• Brutal Learning Curve
• Some Controls Suffer due to Mouse and Keyboard