Why too it manages to brush off that early assumption of it being nothing more than a competent brawler. Without going over the aforementioned surprise at getting beaten to a pulp if you’re not careful, there are two crucial pointers as to why Sifu is so effective. Competence neither degrading, nor all that flattering. More surprising a revelation given that for anyone having ever played anyone of the Yakuza games in their life, Sifu on the surface seems recognizable and not all that spectacular. What access there is so far to the game may not be much, but what’s here is nothing short of a delightfully addictive vertical slice of what Sifu is at its heart. Most importantly, regardless of how many repeated trips there’s been, that enjoyment has not wavered. Since then, it’s taken me around another half-dozen attempts to finally get the rhythm down to a point I can now tackle everything thrown at me without dying. During my first booting-up of developer Sloclap’s latest, martial-arts beat-em-up affair, I found myself eventually getting through the level - its climactic boss battle included - to then immediately retry the entire ordeal at least half a dozen times in quick succession. In this case it’s the former, I’m pleased to say. Yet the stats don’t lie - that dreaded question inevitably popping up: is it me or is it the game? Failure shouldn’t be arriving this early on and at such a high frequency. To revive, albeit your player-character now slightly older…only to fall a few short moments later to another measly grunt and another (you assume, as soon as the sigh/groan has passed) easily-avoidable strike. The surprise of getting downed by what one would usually denote the “lower grunts” of the game. The first time playing through Sifu is bound to have those worries emerge. To convince you that those avoidable deaths or missable tells from incoming enemies can be rectified via further investment.
If this is the direction any developer wants to take with their game - to be as unrelenting or just pure honest with how proceedings are likely to go - pray they have something tempting to return back to. Whereby seemingly-unwelcoming introductions can have them sign out long before they, or in fact the game itself, has hit either respective stride. Not least if you’re going to do it at the beginning of any game - where players are still getting to grips with controls and general premise alike.