3.5/5 ★ – Chaos_Controller's review of Sifu.

Sifu is almost great. Its story mode, at least on the lowest difficulty, is a lot of fun. Its combat is smooth, satisfying and very well animated. As a big fan of martial arts action films, it definitely scratches an itch no other game has. I also really like its progression system, since it offers a lot of replay value. Story could've used some better voice acting though. My main problem with it is the scoring system. You have to get certain high scores to reach certain optional goals, which unlock either points that you can spend on modifiers, or cosmetic outfits. Unfortunately the scoring system feels far too strict imo. It's doable in some stages, and ridiculous in others. Like, the second stage has the hardest score requirement for some reason. And on the topic of unlockable outfits. I really wish more of these were unlockable through more normal means, cause some of the stuff they have you doing to unlock these, is ridiculous. I don't really like paying for these outfits and then realizing I'll never unlock some of them. But really, the part of this game that really sucks, is the Arena mode. This mode honestly feels like it's at odds with fair game design. 90% of deaths in this come from enemies sucker punching you in the back of the head while you can't defend (cause the parry window is very small and sometimes you're just locked into an animation), or enemies just ganking you. It's extremely frustrating. And then you get to the stages with the locked camera angle that will frequently obscure enemies. On top of all that, many of these stages impose penalties that make it even worse. And there's no difficulty setting for this mode. Mind you, some of the stages are fun, but lots of them are awful.