PSA: Sifu Might Not Be The Game You Think It Is

thegamer.com:

I went into Sifu expecting a Jet Li simulator that would make me feel like the greatest martial artist who ever lived. What I got instead was my ass almost immediately handed to me. This is a game about mastery in a very literal sense. Mirroring the decades-long quest for vengeance, and diligent training, of the main character, you need time and patience to get the best out of it.

You're going to die, repeatedly and unceremoniously. Death is hard-coded into the game's DNA. It's designed around it. Sifu comes from a school of game design that asks you to bang your head against a brick wall, over and over again, until you manage to beat the odds and smash through it. Your head might be bloodied and bruised, but you'll be satisfied that you managed it in the end.

Related: Racing Lagoon Was A Stylish Fusion Of Street Racing And Role-Playing

This is a game you simply cannot play casually. If you go through it aggressively spamming attacks, you might scrape through a few battles. But eventually, inevitably, you'll hit a point where you can no longer make any meaningful progress. For some of you, that probably sounds ideal. A lot of gamers will relish a hefty challenge like this. But it will also put a lot of people off.

To finish Sifu you have to, in the parlance of our times, get good. There's no way around it. There's a wealth of moves in the game, tailored to countless different combat situations, and you need to learn a good chunk of them. You also have to pay close attention to how enemies move—particularly the bosses, who are absolutely relentless. Give them an inch and they will destroy you.

It can be a Jet Li simulator, and the combat is magnificent when it clicks and you manage to clear a roomful of bad guys without