10 Essential Tips to Master Sifu’s Combat

Sloclap has created a deep and rewarding combat system in ‘Sifu’. The game’s many challenges cannot be overcome without first understanding the intricacies of the games many systems. Mastering the games many tools will take the experience from frustrating and punishing, to fun and addicting. The simplistic tale of revenge, along with the small number of levels, may make it seem like a short title. However, like the many rogue-lite titles before it, you will be repeating levels continuously for multiple different reasons. As you navigate the levels, learning the various challenges within each of the five, use these essential tips to make the tale of revenge a little less painful.

1. Unlock permanent upgrades early

The many skills and upgrades in ‘Sifu’ can be overwhelming, and at times, confusing. There are two main ways to upgrade your character throughout your playthrough, shrine upgrades, and skill upgrades. Shrine upgrades can be found scattered throughout the levels and offer a single upgrade each time you interact with them. The other way is in the form of skill upgrades, which use experience points to unlock various move sets and other character upgrades. It can be easy to want to unlock as many of these skills as you can in a single run, however, if you die and need to restart, these upgrades are lost unless you focus your time and experience points on a single skill. ‘Sifu’ allows you to permanently upgrade these skills once you’ve purchased them a total of six times. Focusing on a single upgrade at a time will allow you to carry these permanently unlocked skills into subsequent runs. The first one you should focus on is the “Strong Sweep Focus”, a very powerful sweep ability that allows you to knock enemies to the ground, even bosses. Basic enemies who are wielding a weapon will also drop the weapon following this attack. It becomes your go-to skill for controlling the fight ahead of you. Some of our other favorites are Charged Backfist, Raining Strikes, Focus Claw, Environmental Mastery, and Slide Kick. Whichever you decide will be the most useful for your play style, remember to focus your points on single skills to unlock them forever.

2. Defense is the best offense

It can be easy to want to constantly attack during your various combat encounters throughout the game. However avoiding incoming attacks, while timed properly, allow for a punish state on the enemies and bosses. Utilizing L1 and the left stick on PlayStation, you can avoid nearly every single attack that comes your way. During our playthrough of the game, the guard button was held down throughout almost every single encounter, allowing for a quicker avoid with the left stick. Although holding guard constantly inhibits your ability to move, the enemies will still come to you, we assure you. So, instead of needing to hit guard and which ever direction required on the left stick once you enter a fight, hold down that guard button so you can just focus on the avoids. Majority of the attacks in the game can be avoided simply by pulling down on the left stick. Although various enemies will utilize sweeps, which require pushing up on the stick, we found it beneficial to simply block the incoming steeps. As long as you have structure and are holding down the guard button, the sweep will be blocked. If you hit the left stick down during a sweep you will be knocked off your feet. Patience really is a virtue when it comes to the combat, use a defensive-first approach to open up punish states on the various enemies, making combat a breeze.

3. Focus on focus

Found peppered throughout the games five levels are shrines, allowing you to select a single skill upgrade. Being smart with these upgrades from the beginning will save you potential headaches down the road. Because of the way the game is setup, these shrine upgrades carry on for the rest of your playthrough. So, skills you select in the first level, will carry into the second, and so on. The checkpoint system in ‘Sifu’, for the time being, is based off of age and age only. If you get to the game’s next area older than the starting age of twenty, you’ll be able to go back to the previous and change these shrine upgrades. You just need to make sure you get to the next level at a younger age. However, if you get to a level at the starting age of twenty, you will be unable to change up your shrine upgrades. It’s complicated and a bit messy, something the developers have stated will be changing in a future patch. For now, we suggest you focus on upgrading the ability to regain your focus meter on avoids. “Focus Regain” allows you to gain more focus on each successful avoid, making it an extremely potent skill to upgrade early. This will allow you to pull off the previously mentioned “Strong Sweep Focus” more often, controlling the overwhelming odds in most encounters. Once you have unlocked the permanent skills you have your eyes on, you can then start utilizing experience points on shrine upgrades. “Focus Reserve” coupled with “Focus Regain” work beautifully together, increasing the number of focus bars you have, as well as the amount going into them on each successful avoid. These are your bread and butter for gaining the upper hand in the titles many challenging encounters.

4. You do not need to perform a takedown to regain health

While many believe that performing a takedown with triangle and circle when prompted is the only way to regain health, it isn’t true. The health regain comes even when defeating an enemy without a takedown. Takedowns can be risky because some of the enemies will avoid them and become enraged, refilling their health and becoming far more aggressive. While takedowns are cinematic and sometimes a life saver, remember the risk. You will still regain health by simply attacking an enemy following the takedown prompt, without running the risk of enraging them. Along with the health regain you get from defeating enemies, you’ll also get a full refill at each shrine. So be strategic with your takedowns, don’t use them if you’re low on health and near a shrine. The goal of the game is to get to the next level at the youngest age possible, so use this strategy to avoid enraged enemies and pointless deaths.

5. Being quick to attack can lead to instant takedowns

In many of the rooms throughout the levels, there are chances to get an instant take down on enemies. ‘Sifu’ does not have any sort of dedicated stealth system, however, you can lower the numbers in some of the rooms throughout the game. As long as you hit an enemy before they notice you, you will get an instant takedown, even on the bigger enemies. This is most useful in the final two encounters of the game’s first level, The Squats. When you reach the warehouse area, pathing around the perimeter can allow you to get a total of five instant takedowns, cutting the number of enemies you need to fight in half. The following room gives you the chance to run up to the brute enemy for an instant take down as well, as long as you’re quick on the attack. There are many of these chances scattered throughout the five levels, so be sure to stealth around an area first if you’re struggling. The few enemies you can take down instantly may be the difference between life and death. These sucker punch takedowns also rarely, if ever, turn into enraged enemies, so there really isn’t a reason not to thin out the herd a bit before diving into the fight. This tip, coupled with our defense, is the best tip to ensure you come out of each encounter successful.

6. The heavy attack is overpowered

While many players find themselves focusing on the light attack using square, the triangle heavy attack is where you should really be focusing. Although the attacks are slightly slower to pull off, they frequently knock basic enemies and bosses down to the ground; allowing you to hold circle to pummel them before pulling them back to their feet. The heavy attack is so powerful that you can use it to completely control the first two boss encounters. As long as you get the punish state mentioned earlier, by timing your avoids perfectly, you can knock bosses to the ground with three to four heavy attacks. Using these knockdowns as well as the “Strong Sweep Focus”, ensure that the boss will spend the majority of the fight on their back, making it much easier to finish the fights without a death. Fajar “The Botanist” and Sean “The Fighter” can both be worked with this strategy during their phases. Fighting large groups with this strategy, ensures that many enemies will be knocked down, allowing you to either pummel them or give you some breathing room to focus on other enemies. It’s just another way for you to control the overwhelming odds facing you in most of the games encounters. Fighting smart, not hard, is really the name of the game here, allowing you to overcome seemingly impossible odds.

7. Be smart with your weapons

The weapons in ‘Sifu’ can be a saving grace in many encounters, especially after leveling them up using shrine upgrades. However, the weapons will eventually break on you, leaving you to resort back to your fists. So, if you grab a weapon but know you won’t need it for the next encounter, holding R1 on PlayStation, will allow you to drop the weapon, saving it for a later encounter. Just make sure to strategically place it somewhere out of reach for the enemies, because they will turn your weapon against you given the opportunity. Because of the lack of any sort of procedurally generated content, you will begin to memorize the five levels like the back of your hand; quickly learning which encounters you’d like a weapon for, and which ones you don’t. Because you’re working with a limited number of attacks before the weapon breaks, save those hits for the games more difficult enemies. Unlocking “Environmental Mastery” will also allow you to perform some of the instant takedowns mentioned earlier, by kicking weapons at unsuspecting enemies. It is easy to think that just because a weapon is placed in an area, that must mean the next encounter is difficult. Most of the time you will break a weapon in an area you could have easily beat with your fists, just to be met with stiff resistance in the next encounter. Everyone will struggle with different areas, so save your weapons for the areas you know you have trouble with, instead of wasting them on the easier encounters.

8. Using “eye strike” makes those instant sword kills far easier

As you progress further into the game, enemies will begin to wield short swords. Many have discovered that after unlocking “Charged Backfist”, you can turn those swords into an instant kill which equips the sword and charges it up in the same way you charge up the normal “Charged Backfist”. Striking an enemy with this charged up sword will instantly kill them, rendering the sword unusable. It is an extremely powerful ability, especially for the games later levels, where stronger enemies become more frequent. However, the timing of it can be a little difficult to pull off. You need some time to charge the attack, if you do not hit an enemy with it, you will need to charge it again, opening yourself up for counter attacks. Instead of trying to time the instant kill while enemies are aggressively attacking you, make it far easier on yourself; if you have a full focus bar, use the “Eye Strike” first to buy yourself the perfect amount of time for the one-shot sword attack. This focus attack is unlocked by default and this strategy guarantees your strike will hit its target, each and every time. Just remember that after you hit an enemy with it, the sword is lost, so make sure to use it on the enemy you have the hardest time fighting. This will immediately remove them from the equation, so you can focus on the easier enemies.

9. Do not get frustrated and quit boss encounters

It can be easy to give up when you are struggling with a boss by restarting the level to reset your frustration. However, even if you’re getting worked over, time and time again by the boss, do not give up. While these bosses, like those seen in the ‘Souls’ franchise, may seem impossible, they are still a programmed enemy in a video game. Meaning even though they seem erratic and unpredictable, they are not. Each boss has a set number of moves, with a set number of ways to counter or avoid those moves. Even if the boss is pummeling you again and again, you have until your seventies before you die and need to restart the level from scratch. Quitting out of the encounter in frustration will ensure that when you reach the boss again, you’ll be in for the same exact result. Instead, take each opportunity you have to learn the patterns of the bosses, how to counter each move set, when openings come to get in some damage of your own, and so on. You’ll find that the more you get punished by a boss, the quicker you become proficient at countering them. There is no reason to punish yourself by quitting out of the fight in frustration, when the exact same will happen next time you meet. Even if you feel you are making no progress in learning the fight, continue to allow the boss to punish you, because you will be subconsciously learning their moves. Every boss has very obvious tells, hinting at which move is coming, learning them is the only way to overcome the challenge.

10. Make sure to leave yourself room with your age to change up skills later on

On your first playthrough of ‘Sifu’, it can be easy to want to get to the next level at the age of twenty before moving on. However, as mentioned earlier, this may come back to haunt you in the end. The only way to overwrite your current run and skill is to get to the next level at a younger age, if you focus on beating each level by twenty before moving on, you’ll be unable to go back and change the shrine upgrades you selected. While developer Sloclap has stated they are working on a way to overwrite a run regardless of age, this patch has yet to be implemented. You may find yourself struggling in the later levels because of the shrine upgrades you selected, or you may find a better path that works for you. There is no shame in letting the final boss of a level kill you a couple times just to give yourself some wiggle room later on. You may find that the shrine upgrades that have worked for you up until this point, aren’t very useful moving forward. It is best to at least play through a level first before going back to attempt to get to that level at the age of twenty. This ensures that you can rework your character to better fit the next wall you hit in the game. Difficulty spikes come frequently in the game, so you may feel the urge to go back and change some upgrades to experiment. Until the patch comes, allow that final boss to kill you a couple times, just so you can scout ahead.

While ‘Sifu’ offers a heavy dose of challenges and a steep learning curve, the game can be overcome. Use these tips, as well as ones you develop for yourself, and you will find yourself a master at the art of Kung Fu in no time.