Sifu (Switch) Review | Nintendo Live

Sevo It launched last February on PlayStation and PC and quickly built a craving core due to its powerful action and interesting basic “aging” mechanics. Now, nine months later, Sloclap’s martial arts brawler has arrived on Switch with a solid port that doesn’t sacrifice anything that made the original so great.

The game begins by sneaking into a rain-soaked temple, hitting the students inside, and eventually joining allies as you make your way into the building. After you reach the top, it is revealed that you are Yang, who fights and kills the Temple Sifu while watching his child from the treasury. This child was later killed by one of Yang’s associates. However, a medal in the child’s hand brings them back to life. Later referred to as “the hero,” the child is the protagonist of the game, who – after turning twenty – seeks revenge.

Sifu tasks you with making your way through five stages to defeat those involved and eventually find Yang. The basic mechanism includes the medal that revived your character as a child, which gives the hero the ability to cheat death. However, this has a price: every time you die, you age another year and your death meter goes up by one. So, the game starts at 20, you die once, your counter reaches one, and now you are 21. If you die again, your death counter is two and you are now 23. This culminates in your first death. Seventy is the end of your life. Defeating enemies can reverse this counter to reduce the amount of your age when you die.

So what happens over the years? Each decade the hero is clearly aging. The older you get, the more damage you take, but you also do more damage. The game has skills that are unlockable using points obtained upon death or after reaching the shrine. They can be unlocked for a specific run, or they can be made permanent by buying them five more times after unlocking (this doesn’t need to be done in one round, though). Once you reach the next decade, you lose access to a bunch of unlockable abilities for that range (except for the ones you’ve already unlocked, of course). Don’t worry, it looks more complicated than it is.

When replaying levels, you can start the level at the earliest age you previously reached the level. Therefore, if you reach level two at the age of 54, you can start the next round of that level at the same age.

Fighting is the star of the show. Sifu is inspired by classic movies like Gareth Evans Raid Park Chan Wook’s masterpiece big boyAnd in honor of the hardcore fight scenes from those movies. You are equipped with light and heavy attack, dribbling, and guard/parry as your primary move set. Lights and Heavy can be tied into their own combinations, as well as specific directional inputs built into your buttons for specific moves. One area where this combat really shines is how it challenges you to have a complete mastery of your environment. If you see a chair on the floor, or a bottle on the bar, it can be kicked / thrown at your enemy at any moment. You can also bring your enemies back to walls to make those hits worse, or even throw them off the balcony or kick them into the stairwell.

This is what Batman Arkham The combat will look as if it has the mechanical complexity of the game like devil may cry. Often you are faced with many enemies at once; Wearing their stun counters allows you to perform a removal action very similar to the ones in Axe: Shadows Die Twice. Feel the fighting in Sifu Incredibly good. The combination of visual and sound effects gives each hit a powerful feel, which really brings out that deep experience of watching the best kind of action movie.

It is a good thing that you can come back from death in Sifu, because you will die. Much. Sifu are tough as nails, and there are no two ways without them. Learning and making full use of your quirks and parries is essential to your survival, just like the games that inspired them, like Capcom God’s hand. Once things are broken, there is nothing like it; The satisfaction gained from overthrowing the president who has been destroying you for ages makes all the blood, sweat, and tears worth it.

If that difficulty doesn’t sound like your thing, developer Sloclap has thankfully added options since launch to help you out. Besides the new difficulties for student and master to make it easier or harder, respectively, the game also contains a list of play rates that you can unlock after completion that can make your experience easier or harder at your own discretion.

The Switch version runs at 30 frames per second more than anywhere else, and beyond one point early in the first level, there aren’t many keyframe drops we noticed while docked. Hand carry tends to drop a lot, but that usually happens when walking, not during actual fights, fortunately. Visually, the game has carried over to the more modest hardware fairly well, thanks in part to its amazing art style. There is a film grain effect that is most noticeable in the docking position; While it’s not a game breaker in any way, it’s enough to stand out, especially in front of the white lights of the museum platform. The initial loads are also long compared to the PS5; However, it is quite manageable and looks really bad in direct comparison.

conclusion

Sifu was one of the best games of the year when it launched on other platforms, and it’s no different now on the Switch. Its intense battles that push you to the limits of your skills, paired with a clever aging mechanic, make it one of the most satisfying gaming experiences in the world. beating type. Although the Switch port has obviously been brought back a bit earlier than the PS5 version, it’s still a more than valid option for Nintendo gamers only and those who want to try out a kung-fu brawler on the go.