Sifu would be a blast, if it could get out of its own way

polygon.com:

Sifu’s got a good pitch. You are a martial arts master, bent on revenge, fighting odds that are impossible to overcome in a lifetime. But you have a secret weapon: Each time you die, you rise again. You race to finish your quest as your avatar grows frail and gray.

It’s a novel concept, so it’s a shame that developer Sloclap wasn’t able to make it work. Sifu is a game full of confusing, inescapable, infuriating shortcomings, and almost all of them are tied to its supernatural twist.

Before we get into that, let’s talk about the good stuff: The “badass martial arts master” portion of the pitch is executed with incredible skill. Sifu has the bones of a wonderful action game, giving you all the tools to play out your Hong Kong action fantasies. Light and heavy attacks string into beautifully animated combos that hit with satisfying thwacks and comic book motion lines. You can finish stunned enemies with brutal, speedy environmental executions that will elicit gasps over and over again. From the jump, you’re a force to be reckoned with.

But your enemies put up a fight. They can drop you in a couple of hits, and they use their numbers to surround and overpower you. Sifu’s goons are hardly as polite as the kind we’ve come to expect in a post-Batman: Arkham third-person combat world. They don’t wait their turn, and they don’t broadcast their intent with blinking warning icons. So you’re always on the move, sliding across tables and hopping over furniture — constantly scrambling to deny them the full benefit of their superior numbers.

When assailants do catch up to you, you’ve still got tools — maybe too many. Sifu’s defensive resource is called “structure,” and it works a lot like “posture” in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. You