Dhelio Sifu Review

We all know those martials arts movies. Being a kid in the 90s I watched plenty of those fighting movies, in many styles. There was Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, but also movies like Wasabi, any movie from Bud Spencer and Terence Hill; plenty of movies where the premise was more or less an excuse to see men fighting. Sifu feels like a love letter to those movies, to those moments like in IP Man where a master in the fighting arts shows how much more skilled and strong he is than his adversaries. The combat system is great; it feels fluid, the animation is top notch, with syncing that is even better than the Arkham games, there are plenty of moves that make you feel like a badass when you can execute them flawlessly without getting hit. There are also a few special moves that can be used to control the fight flow by stunning enemies for a while, plus a few weapons that can be either use to maul your adversaries or thrown for hefty damage and stun. It's a great upgrade from Absolver, where it was mostly messy and not very intuitive. There also a good variety of arenas and situations; the Museum level it's an excellent display of both level design and 3D art that relates to the simple story told. The art style if a stylized low polyish one that sacrifices detail for clarity, inherited from Absolver, which I quite like. Aside from the main story progression, there are also surprisingly plenty of arenas where to perfect the mastery of the system, adding value to the playtime. Which, even if it's "low" for the completion (around 40 hourish I recon), it feels much longer due to the adrenaline of the game. But there is a bit of in Yin this Yang. The final boss breaks the rules of the game up to that point by NOT allowing you to use special moves (something you might've grown accustomed to, especially if you go for the true ending route). Sure, it makes sense tematically, but it's frustrating to arrive to the climax and discover that it forces the player to use a defensive stance. The dodge mechanic is also underutilized; player can dodge up or down, which theoretically allows to dodge different attacks; only, most enemies only attack up, with very very few moves that use the down attack; as such, I never really bothered to learn when to dodge down, since it was so rare an occurence. Aside from that I have trouble trying to recall any defect of the game. Maybe the starting tutorial could be more comprehensive and explicative; but for what it is it's a great game. I strongly recommend Sifu.