4.5/5 ★ – Jim_Howdy's review of Sifu.

When playing Sifu, you will either feel like the coolest, or the most stupid person ever. Sifu is a game that manages to have some of the cleanest and most satisfying combat I've felt from an action game. The core mechanics are really neat using a structure system and having the revival mechanic. Along with the really strong core mechanics, it's a really hard game, enemies are punishing and life is a limited resource, meaning your mistakes go far. The difficulty isn't unfair either, any issue faced will be fair and come down to player fault and not the game pulling some bs move. I was actually really scared to get the game back in 2022 knowing how difficult it supposedly was. I remember playing quite a bit of it but getting really stuck somewhere to the point that I actually dropped the game. However, jump to recently, the new updates dropped new content and I checked it out for the fun of it. While checking it out, took more time to actually learn the game and everything clicked. I went back and tried the main story again and everything felt so natural. Sifu is one of those games that I adore, there is a pretty complex system in place that is simple to understand on the surface, but without really digging your teeth into it there won't be much success. The learning curve is a really satisfying one to overcome and it's really fun being able to easily defeat the enemies/bosses that you used to struggle to beat. The game isn't too long, but has a bunch of side content after beating the main game. The big one that got me back into Sifu in the first place was the arena mode, which features shorter more focused combat mission with neat little gimmicks each time. The overall package of Sifu is so incredibly worth it. The combat never stops being fun and simply cool to look at, and there is a lot of content included. While this kind of game may not be for everyone, for those that it does appeal to I can't recommend it enough. Completion of Sifu is a mixed bag, if you're just going for the platinum it isn't too hard, you'll have to beat the game through twice and play for quite a bit of time but there is nothing grindy. I was surprised that I got the platinum as easily as I did but I'm not complaining. There is the side content though, which I'm not including in my consideration for completion as it's pretty much an entire extra game worth of content.