I'd been looking forward to this one, the trailers looked superb and I'm a massive kung fu/martial arts fan, but I still wasn't convinced that the scripted gameplay sequences would reflect the actual game.
They nailed it.
A lot of the chat I've seen online has resolved around the old difficulty discourse and I think it's a real shame that this topic smothers discussion so much. This game deserves much more appreciation for what it actually achieves, which is one of the best ever combat systems in gaming. It's part Streets of Rage, part Sekiro, part Ninja Gaiden and, well, if that doesn't whet the appetite, close the tab, no worries.
I had assumed it would be a button masher with lots of baked-in animations and it can be that. If you just hammer the attack buttons, you'll see your character getting their head smashed in from multiple angles by a range of enemies. It's not a game that rewards you furiously pressing light attack. It's about timing, spacing and decision making on the fly.
A typical encounter will involve you coming up against a mob, being attacked on multiple sides and having to adapt adapt adapt to take them all down. At first, I was trying to parry everything and pick them off one by one with a long combo, but you learn that's not really possible when you're so heavily outnumbered. It's about using the enemies against each other and making best use of the environment and whatever tools are to hand.
You might throw a few jabs at the closest guy, then push that enemy into a couple of others, follow up with a sweep to put another on the ground, quickly kick a bucket at the fella who's coming at you from the side, then grab his pole as he falls, do a wide spin attack, whack five baddies in the mouth and create some space, then follow up with the guy who's looking most stunned, take him down, then catch a bottle thrown at you, throw it straight back and follow up with a running sweep. Ground pound, then leap over the counter top and throw a brick at the goon sprinting at you, then grab a sweeping brush, smash it into some guy's nuts and uppercut him out of action. Then duck below a swinging machete, charge up a backfist, grab the machete as the guy hits the deck and launch it at some clown cowering at the edge of the screen and then...
And so it goes, like a kid describing the first time they saw Bruce Lee in The Big Boss.
Aesthetically, it's very effective and clean even if I don't much like that angular cartoonish style which has found favour. The music is decent and atmospheric, if a little unmemorable. The story is fine, perfunctory and playing off some genre clichés. No complaints. It's all about the gameplay, though. It totally captures the rhythm of the highest tier 2D brawlers but with a really deep, sophisticated and fluid combat system that makes it so satisfying in a Soulsy way. When you do start to get the rhythm and timing down and you blow through a previously impossible room or boss without a scratch, it feels fantastic.
Honestly, if you were at all put off by the difficulty discourse, please have another look at this game. It's my favourite since Returnal and will be a GOTY contender for me.
Sifu
-
shadowless_kick
- Member
- Posts: 116
- Joined: May 1st, 2018, 12:16 am
Re: Sifu
I read a few reviews that turned me off this game, not due to difficulty but instead to unweidly, impractical systems (at least according to the reviewers) and a wonky camera that complicated an already difficult campaign.
but with this paragraph, you've just rekindled my interest; it sounds like the kind of experience all martial arts flick fans crave. I still plan to wait a bit and see if any of the issues brought up in reviews get addressed through patches, but playing that scenario above sounds way too juicy to just give up on wholesale.
