- Publisher: Sloclap
- Release Date: Feb 8, 2022
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Feb 6, 2022Like a 20-year-old combatant, Sifu comes out of the gate strong. Its core combat feels excellent, and the moment-to-moment action looks better than most Hollywood blockbusters. Sadly, as you progress, the action begins to show its teeth and eventually becomes a tiresome grind. Sifu deserves props for its incredible sense of style and tone, but it is also a great example of why growing old isn't always fun.
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PLAYMar 7, 2022Brawling with goons is fun, but the demand for perfection when facing difficult bosses leads to wearying repetition, even for those who like harder games. [Issue#12, p.90]
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Feb 6, 2022Despite an excellent combat system and intriguing world design, Sifu falls too short of its premise. Regardless of whether you’re playing it casually or going harder, the death mechanic is simply too punishing to be enjoyable. Perhaps with a fairer system, this would make for a better game.
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Feb 6, 2022For 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.
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Feb 6, 2022Replaying the same level over and over again to grind out XP you need to advance isn’t a challenge, it’s poor design. Randomly making your enemies invincible to spice up the difficulty isn’t a challenge, it’s poor design. I could go on, but I think this review is becoming like one of Sifu’s levels – endlessly repeating itself.
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Feb 17, 2022The reverence for Asian martial arts films of all kinds is evident in Sifu. But in mixing ‘of all kinds’ together, it diminishes the individual identities of each. Just like martial arts films are more than a select sequence of fight scenes, culture is more than a cool aesthetic. Sifu uses homage to include everything, say nothing, and is ultimately just vexing.
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Feb 8, 2022As a straight action game the core combat is elegant and original but the roguelite structure makes the already mountainous difficulty just too much to bear.
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Feb 7, 2022The Chinese term “kung fu” roughly translates as “a skill acquired through hard work and practice”. Sifu might just be the purest expression of the concept that games have ever seen. The journey is brutal. It is not for the faint of heart, nor the short of patience. But those prepared to rise to the challenge will find that something spectacular comes after the pain. Is it worth the hardship? Ask me when the wounds have healed.
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Feb 6, 2022Sifu offers plenty of unique promise, but it's no kung-fu master yet. The difficulty spikes will be off-putting for some, but others may enjoy the challenge, but the way it stacks the odds against a player is more frustrating than fun…And yet, players looking for a new challenge might want to pick up Sifu. Even though not every design choice feels like a good one, the foundation and potential for something truly amazing are there.
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Feb 6, 2022Sifu’s singular focus on the perfect run leaves the essential feeling of incremental progress too far out of reach.
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Feb 6, 2022Sifu is a game that could have been something amazing, with its fascinating premise and superbly crafted and fluid combat mechanics and animations. However, the game’s frustrating need to make the gameplay ridiculously hard just left me tired and annoyed. Sloclap really needs to think about how they can make this game more accessible, possibly by including more shortcuts, an adjustable difficulty setting, or just lowering the impact of health lost from fighting your average foe. Hopefully they will bring in some patches that will address these issues, but as it stands, I’d wait before investing time in the world of Sifu.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Feb 11, 2022The next big thing in the beat em up. Delicious in his playability and fresh in his visuals. Needs more charisma for his characters, but his lack of great heroes and villains it's served with his fighting mechanics. Maybe the biggest step in the XXI century for the genre. [Recommended]
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Feb 7, 2022Where Sifu most earns its seriousness, for me, is in that largely unspoken marriage of combos and counters with questions of perception and synchronicity. This is a game about the punch-drunk unevenness of time, and the way that unevenness depends on the mind you bring to bear. [Eurogamer Recommended]
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Feb 6, 2022Sifu is incredibly frustrating because beneath all of its messy, clunky contrivances, there is a fantastic action game that I really, really want to play. But Sifu can’t get out of its own way, and its high-concept ambitions spoil its fundamental pleasures.
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Feb 6, 2022Is it worth the effort? Like we said: The highs here are very high, the sense of potential mastery potent. (Game looks great, too, with a fluid, slightly cartoonish style.) But progress will take a certain bloody-minded persistence—and a willingness to overlook the game’s various crimes against authenticity. (To be clear: This is a team of French developers making a video game about what they think an Asian martial arts movie looks like; it’s so divorced from anything resembling a story about real people or cultures as to land somewhere at the intersection of stereotype and cliché.) With those caveats in mind, though, Sifu remains the kind of game it’s hard to stay away from for very long—for no other reason than a desire to take vengeance on it for what it did to you the last time you played.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 431 out of 545
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Mixed: 49 out of 545
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Negative: 65 out of 545
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Feb 10, 2022One of the most challenging games I have ever played in my life. The more you practice the more you will succeed :)
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Feb 9, 2022
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Feb 9, 2022