The physical copy of Sifu is now available and those in Southeast Asia can pick up a Sifu towel from these official retailers. Sifu and the Sifu-branded towels were provided by Excelgames Interactive, the official distributor for Sifu in Southeast Asia.

When I first saw Sifu, all I could think of was the classic martial arts films where a character faces multiple enemies at once, beating each one with such flair and grace that it becomes a joy to watch. Playing this action beat-em’-up expresses the same feeling, as I felt powerful, in control, but vulnerable. Sifu strikes this perfect balance of difficulty and fun as you go through each of the thoroughly thought-out levels over and over, where mistakes simply result in experience. This is a roguelike twist like no other.

Fight, die, revive, revenge

You play as a child of a Sifu that runs his own martial arts school. One night, a former student raids the school and takes his former master’s life in front of this child’s eyes. Eight years go by and the child is now older, well-trained, and ready to face the same group that raided his home that night. The child is now also equipped with a magical talisman that revives its user after death, but at the cost of getting older each time.

It’s a fascinating concept for a roguelike action game, as each death in this game makes your character older. A death results in you aging by a year. Die again you get older by two years, so on and so forth. There are ways to reduce how much a death ages your character, but if you’re not careful, you can find yourself hitting your senior years at the start of the game, which is not ideal.

Reaching a prominent point in one’s life –for example, one’s thirties – will result in you dishing out more damage in this game, but at the cost of a lower total life pool. It’s a nice trade-off as it makes the player more effective in fights, but lessens room for error, making it much harder, or much easier – it depends on how efficient you are with the game’s combat system.

It took awhile for me to fully understand the game’s combat, which has a long list of combos and moves that slowly become accessible to you as you progress through the game. These moves also reminded me of action stars such as Donny Yen or Jet Li in their prime.

Each run resulted in me getting better at the game, inching closer to the game’s end, and at even younger ages compared to my previous run. Sifu is a game that features multiple gauntlets that challenge your knowledge of the game. It was frustrating at the start, but I eventually learned how to overcome each roadblock with enough trial and error, aided by access to useful moves that make certain encounters more palatable.

The combat in Sifu features a system where you can beat an opponent by lowering his health or building their Structure gauge enough to make them vulnerable to a finishing blow. It’s a combat system that complements players using all of the tools at their disposal – parry, dodge, combos, knockbacks, grabs, etc. You can only go far by just spamming the same move over and over as this game is all about thinking on your feet and using the appropriate move for the given situation in front of you. Once I'd finished the game multiple times, I felt like I was choreographing my own martial arts action scene on the spot. I can use the environments to my advantage, reposition myself for better one-on-one engagements, or use my resources at the right time so that I come out with reasonable health to tackle the next room filled with goons.

The stage is set for epic showdowns

The real challenge is the bosses that reside in each of the five levels in Sifu. These encounters are unique in their own little ways, as each one felt like a puzzle I needed to solve. They have unique movesets that may seem impossible to overcome at first, but after multiple attempts, you’ll soon see the cracks and what you must do to make it an easy fight. Beating these encounters felt just as satisfying as beating a soulslike boss you’ve been stuck on for hours. But the beauty of Sifu is how much more satisfying it is to beat these bosses more efficiently than the last time you beat them. The replayability is strong in this sense, as it was fun going from struggling to even hit the boss to not dying even once.

Despite it only having five stages, it’s a delight to run through each one multiple times, as the developers at Sloclap did a phenomenal job at making each one look and sound appealing, therefore redundancy was never a problem during my time with the game. Each of these levels have a certain personality injected in every corner of the design so that going through them felt like I was watching my favorite scene in a beloved action movie.

From flickering lights leading to the reveal of a nightclub’s real purpose to the supernatural occurrences found in a corporate building, Sifu features memorable cinematic shots paired with a fantastic musical score and audio cues that perfectly reflect the theme of each level. It was all done so well that the mood is perfectly set in each encounter every time, which gets me pumped and ready to kick ass.

A tribute to the genre of martial arts as entertainment

Further exploration even leads to not only more context to the overall narrative, but shortcuts that, if taken, make your run through the level shorter and safer, an option in case age is a problem in your current run. Certain paths lead to more upgrades as well, so after multiple runs the game evolved into me mapping out, planning how to go through the game with the right amount of upgrades, age, and understanding of each level so that when I reach the final encounter, I have enough to see the credits.

Sifu is the perfect representation of why the martial arts genre is so beloved by many and tackled through various mediums through the years. The amount of detail in the moves shown in this game empowers the player, making you feel like you can take on the world. The difficulty may be a turn-off to some, but the difficulty options added recently make it a more accessible game in comparison to how the game first launched in February, giving a chance for more players to experience how much of a gem this game really is, and how much it can inspire future games aimed at delivering a similar experience.