Sifu beginner's guide: Tips and tricks to know before you start

It’s tempting to give R2 a mash when you’re surrounded by enemies – but you shouldn’t. Most enemy attacks, especially later in Sifu, track your movement and still land, even when you’re moving at full speed. Press L1 and up or down instead. This block-and-dodge combo has a better chance of keeping you safe, and even if you don’t dodge, pressing L1 blocks incoming attacks anyway.

In the first stage only the boss ever actually uses low attacks, meaning you can dodge high in pretty much every situation. Dodge high rapidly when enemies are attacking, and then strike back with your own moves once they’re done.

You age in Sifu every time you die, but the situation isn’t as dire as it sounds. Aging a decade reduces your maximum health slightly, but it also boosts your damage output. You’re on your last life once you hit 70, but you should still keep fighting, even if the only thing you’re confident about is losing. Sifu lets you carry things into the next life, including collectibles, shortcuts, and permanent skill unlocks. 

Sifu is littered with small shortcuts that make your runs quicker and easier. Each shortcut you unlock gives you the opportunity to pass through the stage without encountering large groups of enemies – which is great if you’re making progress, but just not quite able to master those bigger encounters.

When you find Jade Statues, you can spend your collected XP to earn new skills. Most skills are easy and affordable to purchase if you intend to use them for a single life. Jade Statues also let you access other abilities, some of which are age-restricted. If you intend to be in the run for the long haul, you should focus on getting the abilities you have access to at a young age first. They still hang around as active skills when you’re older – but you can’t unlock or upgrade them anymore.

Skills are easy and cheap enough to unlock if you intend to use them for a single life, but if you want them around forever, can use your XP to work towards a permanent unlock. For most skills this is the initial XP cost of unlocking the skill, plus that XP cost five more times. All of this XP for no immediate boost feels discouraging, but in subsequent runs, you’ll appreciate having access to skills immediately.

Weapons are important. If you go up against an enemy with a bladed weapon, blocking won’t help you absorb damage – unless you have a weapon of your own. Weapons can also give you added range and damage, and they give you a shot at interrupting enemy attacks far better than your fists can. Especially when starting out and unsure of your abilities, you should use weapons as often as possible. Bottles are everywhere and are a great way to interrupt enemies or surprise them before beating them into the ground.

If you can take enemies by surprise, you should. When an enemy doesn’t expect you to attack, you’ll often break their stance immediately, creating an opening for a quick finisher without too much hassle. If you’re surrounded by attacking enemies, you can quickly take advantage of a finisher, because you’ll be totally invulnerable during the animation and have a moment to compose yourself once it’s done. 

Put enemies in the corner, and keep them there. Many of your moves can knock enemies against a wall, doing extra damage and giving you the chance to move in and keep your combo going. If you can position enemies against a wall, it won’t be long until you’ve beaten the crap out of them. Most enemies won’t be able to do much once against the wall, just watch out for tougher enemies.

Sometimes, you start a run and just know that it isn’t going to go well – but that’s fine. Take this time to focus on exploring every inch of the level to open shortcuts and pick up any collectible items you might’ve passed by on your previous runs. Once all the collectibles and shortcuts are open, focus instead of those permanent skill upgrades to make your next run that much swifter.

Spamming is certainly not going to work in every situation, but combining your block/parry with your animation cancel fast attack can lead to some cheap and cheesy wins against certain enemies – most importantly, the bosses. This strategy can be experimented with across all of the enemies in the game – with many of them being susceptible to it, at least at first.