Sifu 2

2022-02-18

Last week I finished Sifu, after only three or four days of playing it. I was pretty harsh on it when I first started, and while nothing written there was wrong, with the benefit of a few "tricks" it really does come into its own. Just as expected.

Avoid down

90% of attacks in the game can be nullified by using the low-avoid. This even works for orange attacks and weapons. It also gives you structure back. It’s so obscenely effective that just mashing this when enemies are near makes you practically invulnerable. The only time it doesn’t work is when someone does a low attack, which requires you to avoid up (sometimes perfect block works, and you can tank the attack to sacrifice a punish).

In fact, all but one bossfight (including minibosses) boils down to "avoid down the attacks, punish with heavy-heavy-heavy combo". Once you know this, the game loses a lot of its magic. Trust me, figuring out that i was trying too hard to do dodges and perfect blocks was the thing that made this game bearable-to-fun, and it’s not explained in the slightest.

Level Two

I complained that the game threw everything it had at you too early, saying;

Don’t rush to throw in a mixture of different enemies that seem to follow different rules. You’ve got like five levels, space it out.

You can probably already tell where in the game I was trying to perfect at this point - the second level.

Ironically, the second level is the hardest one in the whole game. It has everything to do with the difficulty, let’s recap;

level 1;

stragglers
couple armed guys
room full of weak enemies and 1-2 elites
room full of enemies that are all takedown-able in one shot, mostly to regain your health
the boss

Now let’s compare that against level 2, with shortcut;

level 2

stragglers
couple unarmed guys, but tough
room full of weak enemies and 1-2 elites
long-legged girl, plus stragglers
gym fight with armed enemies and at least one elite
"trial fight" which is the same as 5
quarterstick enemy
two skilled enemies with low attacks and varied patterns
the boss

You might say, sure, alright, it must be more of an endurance test. You’d be wrong, we’re talking about every type of enemy in the game being thrown into this level. Every weapon is present, every type of enemy, every attack you’ll ever face is right here. And it’s by far the longest level in the game. If you want to compare, here’s level 3;

level 3

two goons
the boss

This is a ridiculous difference. The boss for level 3 is even easier than level 2, being purely a check that you can perfect-block the same attack pattern a few times, to deal structure damage instead of health damage. Why wasn’t this level 2?

Level 4 is similar to level 1, with a boss who is marginally more difficult. Level 5 is about the same, with six goons to beat before the boss.

For reference, my minimum starting ages in each level were;

level 2: 20
level 3: 24
level 4: 27
level 5: 29

I’ve seen people do runs with no hits on YT, surely it isnt that bad

Look I’m not saying it’s literally impossible, there are absolutely autists who can do all that. But you can’t. I can’t. Very few players can. My point with all this is that even after beating it, I see huge pacing, progression, telegraphing and conveyance shortcomings. Again, nothing that couldn’t be repaired, but just very notably "misses" for a game that is otherwise at this level of quality.

I both loved and hated Sifu, and when i beat the final boss i uninstalled the game and never want to play it again.