Deep Design Dive: Sifu
Introduction: One versus All
Sifu very much feels like a martial arts movie, the likes of Ip man where you can beat up 20 or so people and not break a sweat (granted you are good enough at the game to pull that off) and a lot of that has to do with the tight game design that brings out that feeling very well.
The systems that work together which I believe allow Sifu to work well and deliver that experience is:
- Enemy posture/structure regenerate at a snail’s pace compared to the player
- Well-designed player kit that is not overloaded, each with clear best-use-scenarios
- Ability to defend and avoid attacks from any direction at all times
- No single enemy is a pushover and will retaliate.
- Enemy encounters usually involve multiple enemies.
- Weaponry adds micro-variance in advantages within an encounter
- Regenerating health on enemy takedown instead of using an item to heal is well in line to encourage masterful defense and offense without decreasing intensity of a battle
- Controlled enemy AI aggression to emphasis on dodge and riposte.
Posture
At first glance, I used to think Sifu is the Sekiro of Beat em’ ups, simply on the basis of the posture system. While that is obviously not true, there is still some value discussion to be had in comparing Sekiro’s and Sifu’s posture system. As such, I will be using the term posture as a blanket statement for the posture/structure system found in Sekiro/Sifu respectively.
As a primer: Posture is a secondary health bar that starts out at zero, and ‘regenerates’ towards zero. Generally, attacks increase posture. When posture is maxed out, a deathblow can be triggered on the enemy. Vice versa if the player’s posture is maxed out, the player will unable to block the next attack and takes the full brunt of the damage. A deathblow is a killing blow on the enemy, instantaneously taking them out even when their health is above zero.
In Sekiro, the posture system works well to encourage aggression as posture can regenerate for both players and enemies. The posture regenerates inversely proportional to how healthy a character is. This is such that a battle never goes for too long.
In Sifu, the player’s posture regenerates reasonably fast whereas enemy’s posture regenerates very slowly. The player recovers posture either over time, or via successful evasions when obtaining neccesary upgrades from shrines. This promotes a more calculated approach in taking out multiple opponents one at a time.
In a single encounter, this design works in that the player can comfortably attack multiple enemies without worrying that they can regenerate posture, or be able to swap to other targets without concern.
In standard play, the posture design in Sifu is well balanced and design such that certain attacks can deal additional posture damage to enemies (more on this later). In that sense, a good player can usually kill all enemies through the deathblow. Poor, or slow turtle play is usually indicated by taking out an enemy via depleting their health, rather than using a deathblow.
Primer: Basic Controls and Surface Mechanics
There are three general attack types in the game: high, low and throws. High and low attacks can be light or heavy but those distinctions are less important. The attacks flow well into each other and certain combinations also have specific effects and can force the enemy onto the ground, or push back other enemies (refer to Traits in next section).
Simultaneously, enemies also have high and low attacks that can be blocked, parried or (high/low) dodged by the player. Enemy throw attacks can only be high dodged. Enemy high attacks can be blocked, parried or high dodged. Enemy low attacks can be blocked, parried or low dodged.
For the unacquainted, blocking sounds as it is. Holding the block button lets the player absorb damage in form of posture damage.
Tapping block right before taking damage lets the player parry an attack.
Holding the block button and moving backward lets the player high dodge and as we’ll discuss later, is the main method of defensive measure in the game.
Holding the block button and moving forward lets the player low dodge.
When graphing how all these defensive options measure up against enemy attacks in a table format, it looks like this:
Just as enemies have these attacks, player attacks can also be high or low attack but those traits are less impactful. On the other hand, additional more impactful traits that player attacks can have are: tripping, pushing and superarmor. This will be discussed in detailed in the next chapter.
To add to this, enemy attacks can also have additional trait called guardbreaking and deal heavy posture damage to the player if blocked. On paper, this is great design as it incentivises players to move away from the safe option of just blocking to the more technical defensive options of dodge and parry.
Looking at it globally, it seems quite fair. There is no single defensive option that works against all attacks, this small nuance in combat design gives every single action an intention and every mistake can cost the player’s health and eventual death. This is well reflected in the combat design of many other action games with heavy emphasis on combat and represents an intentional choice of good game design: that is to give each option an important weigh to it.
In combat design, at least to my instincts and personal judgement, the strength of a single ability dependent on the enemies’ abilities. A parry is only as good as the amount of attacks that can be parried (and of course, the reward that comes with a successful parry but that’s stretching the analogy).
This is most probably the reasoning behind Sekiro’s Perilous Attacks, along with its ominous sound and visual cue every time an enemy attempts it.
SS Combat: ‘Staple’ and ‘Specific’ Abilities
SSentational!
Sifu’s core combat spirit is in the one-vs-all feeling. A deep combat system is essential to necessitate this design, by providing multitude of options, both in offense and defense. Even though Sifu does not have randomised runs, the large variety of enemies give divergence to infinite possible simulations a combat can flow. Many possible specific circumstances can arise, where a specific defense or offense can provide highest value. To support the multiple possible specific circumstances, therefore, a deep combat system with multiple options is essential. This is part of what I believe makes Fighting Games compelling, and relatively inaccessible due to its difficulty.
This combat system comprises of: Deep Offense and Deep Defense. The defensive component is more fundamental to the combat in Sifu, and therefore should be first explored.
Deep defense is yet another made-up jargon which describes a combat system that supports multiple defense options with varying pros and cons in each of them, usually to build variance and dynamic in gameplay to prevent repetition or add mastery. A deep defense system will have:
Staple Defense
The main method of defense. This should not be mistaken for the defensive method that offers the most defense. This will be discussed in detail later just below, with my personal debate on why High Dodge is the staple defense.
Identified by ease of use, relative safety and most prominently: median of usage among playerbase.
Specific Defense
They can be designed to invoke variety in combat such that the player does not button-mash a defense button, or to invoke player mastery where there lies a higher level of defense that Staple Defenses do not offer. In many games, these are usually in the form of Parry.
Identified by sporadic usage, used under particular circumstances, inversely proportional reward versus ease of use (High-risk, high reward. Low-risk, low reward).
In Sekiro, this is seen in the form of the Deflection, the staple defense against most attacks, followed by Mikiri Counter against specifically, perilous thrust attacks and jumps against specifically, perilous sweep attacks. Deflection works as the staple defense because of its generous effective frames of up to 1 second that decreases on repeated presses to discourage spamming. This large window of parry makes it safe to use but is not the go-to solution for every attack as enemies often switch up and use perilous attacks that cannot be deflected.
In Sifu, high dodge is the equivalent staple defense - and for those that have played the game, will attribute as such because the high dodge has the same parameters as Sekiro’s deflection: high ‘effective’ frame, low recovery frames so its easy to spam with little-to-no downtime and is an effective method to avoid damage from most attacks.
The high dodge also has 2 important traits: it can be animation cancelled into at any time, and works with high-dodgeable attacks from any direction.
There is definitely some programming wizardy going in the background to support this, but this design decision is vital to cement it’s ease of use for staple defense and necessitate the one-vs-all combat required in the game. More on this in the next section.
Although the standard guard is the safest method, it is often not something players should rely on as the posture system in Sifu will make players take chip damage when they are bare-handed. In fact, enemies often have guardbreak attacks at the end of their attack strings to discourage players against just blocking.
Simply guarding as opposed to high dodge will also be less likely to put the player in an advantageous position. In Sifu, enemies seem to have their attack strings interrupted when players high-dodge them. This is especially prevalent with the filler weak enemies. I am sure this is a conscious design decision to reward players in learning high dodge by off-setting and letting players in an advantageous position through high dodge.
Low dodge is the equivalent of Mikiri Counter and jumps in Sekiro, in that they are specific defense against low attacks. And this is important because low dodge does NOT dodge against high attacks. Most enemies (if not all) have a low attack in their kit, and they are usually stringed either at the beginning, or at the end of their attack strings. The relatively low amount of low attacks makes it exceptional difficult to defend against, not from a mechanical perspective, but from a knowledge and battle-instinct perspective. As a result, it can be inferred that strong enemies will have the ability to add low attacks in the middle of their attack strings (and oh boy, they are).
Parry represents itself as how I would describe, highest level of defense. Parry has relatively short ‘effective’ frames, and poor execution can very quickly leave the player to multiple attacks. That is because the player often has to parry multiple attacks in a row to stagger the enemy. Parrying is a demanding level of defensive measure in that, it is usually most reliably used against one or few enemies without being overwhelmed, and on attack strings that the player has studied well, and can perform on.
Parry is also subject to the weaknesses of normal blocking. Guardbreak attacks can deal significant damage to the player if the parry was not executed well.
In play, this means parrying has several restrictions, giving it a vague form of specificity to the kind of attacks it should be used to parry against. It is usually executed in the same fashion as high dodge, but not as often. So why parry?
Naturally, to both avoid and deal damage. Parrying is a highly rewarding skill to master. Unlike the easy-to-use high dodge, parry takes much more intention and precision where upon correct execution, can deal posture damage to the enemy, and often can instantly defeat enemies with a single parry with the correct upgrades. In that sense, even though parrying works against all attacks except throws, it is still itself a specific defense by virtue of difficulty of execution.
With all that said, there is actually one more defensive option a player can take, which is by dashing. However, I’ve not mentioned it because of its relative low importance. Don’t get me wrong, dashing is a very important defensive option in repositioning yourself for offense, or against being surrounded. But using dashing defensively does not place the player in an advantageous position for a counter-attack and represents itself a much safer option above blocking, but as such has nil positive outcomes aside from resetting to neutral ground. That said, of course one should not rule out dashing at all, as it is important to give yourself a breather when you are pressured by the enemy. In light of that, you could actually say that dashing is a specific defense.
This way, we can construct a spectrum of defense on an axis measured on the basis of their level of defensive with dashing being the most defensive and parry being the least defensive (borderline offensive). High dodge being in the center and for its usefulness and ease of use, is the staple of defense.
Of course, Sifu has a equal depth in its offensive mechanics. I believe their offensive mechanics can be explained in the same method: with a staple offense and its corresponding specific offensive options in every other circumstances, that can be graphed along an an axis measured on the basis of their level of offense.
Staple Offense
The main method of offense. Typically does the most damage over time (highest DPS) and most frequently used. They usually do not have unique traits tied to them and the entire game's enemy health could be balanced around this.
Identified by median usage among playerbase, usually long attack strings (combos), highest DPS.
Specific Offense
Complementary offensive tools that round up the player's kit. Typically used in specific circumstances and difficult to spam it. They usually have unique niches such as burst damage, utility-focused, defensive-focused etc.
Identified by lower DPS, non-offensive capabilities depending on the game's combat mechanics and reward proportional to risk (High-risk, high reward. Low-risk, low reward)
The entire players’ kit, once fully learned, is fully furnished with specific offensive options that are best used in specific circumstances and can be tagged with what I call: Traits. Enemy attacks can also contain these traits, and relevant traits in the game are: pushing, tripping and superarmor.
Pushing attacks are great for crowd control. Pushed enemies can hit other enemies and cause them to trip. Pushing attacks are vital for keeping the player ample room to breathe. More importantly, enemies can be pushed against a wall, or over a ledge for additional posture damage to get that sweet, sweet deathblow. This can be used against the player. Pushing attacks heavily imply a player’s capability for environmental awareness and masterful use or defense against it. Pushing attacks also make enemies drop their weapons.
Tripping attacks are great to deal with enemies that hold weapons as they drop their weapons when they fall. Tripped enemies also stay on the ground momentarily, indirectly providing the player with room to breathe. In that sense, enemy attacks that trip you will force the player to drop their weapon as well. Tripping attacks heavily imply a player’s capability for threat priority.
In this sense, both pushing and tripping attacks have a minimum value provided in the grand scheme of combat in Sifu, that they provide breathing room, and remove threat of weaponry. But masterful use of pushing and tripping in their respective best-use-case circumstances will provide optimal reward.
Superarmor attacks can prevent the player (or the enemy) from being stagger when executed. This allows for pseudo-counters and can be used in situations when you know the enemies are retaliating. In Sifu, this means, it is typically executed when the enemies are blocking or parrying your attacks which, as will be discussed later, happens often. Superarmor attacks heavily imply a player’s capability of anticipation and riposte and leans well into similar specific defensive options such as the low dodge and parry.
Attacks that don’t have traits are usually accompanied by other factors such as movement, or in-built defensive capabilities in the move.
For example, it is of my opinion that Snap Kick is one of the most easiest, and useful offensive ability to learn in Sifu (if not the first one you should absolutely learn). It is an initiator move that closes distance towards an enemy which is exceptional as the protagonist in the game moves relatively slow once you enter combat. It provides no real weaknesses and is easy to understand and execute. With its highly offensive traits, and its nature of engaging the enemy, it would be rated as the most offensive technique. Not exactly a staple of offense, but definitely easy to use.
On the contrary, a move such as Crotch Punch is a specific offensive option as it does not close in distance, and is paired with a defensive trait of being able to avoid high sweeping attacks (kicks or overhead attacks). This means, it should only be used when:
You know the enemy is executing a high attack.
You have the mechanical mastery to execute the attack reliably, and at fast speed
Sifu’s combat pacing is intense as is. Crotch Punch requires the players to have good fundamentals of Sifu combat, enemies’ moveset and general mechanical mastery before considering crotch punch. Its additional defensive trait positions itself close to the parry, and can be graphed as one of the lesser offensive technique. But of course, this is based on my judgement.
Specific offensive options and specific defensive options are not used as often as their staple counterparts, and the relative lack of their usage contributes to their difficulty. Players are required to put in additional effort to master these abilities and therefore, are often left in the dust.
That said, when you begin the game in Sifu, the player does not start out with their entire offensive kit (thankfully!). The player's offensive kit is, like the defensive counterpart, fully kitted out with the essentials. This includes light and heavy attack combos, a pushing attack and a tripping attack. This is pretty much enough to cover the bases of the game, and gives the player the ability to learn the fundamentals of general attacks and crowd control.
Other skills that have to be learned are all mostly specific offensive options that are counter-attack based which is a higher-order of skill. This is overall, I believe, good skill design in that, players will be more focused on learning fundamentals first.
While it may appear that Sifu has a wide breathe of offensive options, their amazing ‘skill consolidation’ design encourages players to learn one skill at a time, and is well integrated into the roguelike nature of the game. To note, death is expected and a vital process to the players’ progress, experience and fun factor. As such, The ‘skill consolidation’ design is such that, any skill and ability is not permanently unlocked between each ‘run’ unless the player purchases the skill an additional 5 times after the first unlock in a ‘run’. If the player dies in a ‘run’, any non-permanently unlocked skill is removed, wasting precious time and exp if the player opts to learn multiple skills at once.
This skill consolidation is akin to tutorials found in fighting games like Guilty Gear Strive, where players have to successfully execute the combo a set amount of times within limited tries to be considered as mastering the skill. By encouraging players to learn skills this way, they can better internalise each skill into their arsenal, one at a time, and learn its nuances slowly.
The downsides of this skill consolidation design comes when the player has learned a large amount of skills, or have reached a comfortable arsenal of skills that they feel less need to learn additional skills. The extent of this issue varies between players’ intent to learn and is exacerbated by the lack of an extensive tutorial neccesary to support the teaching of this vast amount of offensive options.
Enemy and Encounter Design: Enemies are no pushover.
Filler enemies can reliably kill you if you are careless, or new.
The weakest enemies in this game are stronger than those found in most other games. In a direct conflict, the enemies can and will block and retaliate attacks.
This makes each encounter intense and demands concentration even against a single enemy or more importantly, a group of them. To better illustrate the differences and pinpoint what Sifu emphasises in enemy design, I went through and studied, at a glance, some other games I consider have some similarity to Sifu in terms of combat:
In Sekiro, you can very much button-mash your way through the filler enemies but that is to be expected and in line with Sekiro’s design. After all, Sekiro, has always been about the duels with bosses, a very contrasting design approach fundamentally to a game like Sifu. Sekiro’s combat does share much similarity to Sifu in one of its fundamentals: timing. Other than that, Sekiro is very button-mash friendly in its offensive option, and places heavy emphasis in defensive option with deflection and perilous attacks.
Batman: Arkham City’s combat has the same heart as Sifu. It’s main differences are that it is generally more flowy and combo-based, with batman able to reliably counter or evade multiple attacks from enemies, even from multiple enemies at the same time. Filler enemies in the game have very simple attacks (no attack strings, let alone attack variations) to supplement that design. Combat variety in the game is determined by different enemy types with some being unable to be blocked, or some needing to be stunned, or some having to be attacked from behind. Variety and difficulty in combat is driven by enemy design and their specific weaknesses.
To an extent, Dark Souls 3 (DS 3) is like a slower version of Sifu. In DS 3, each enemy has high threat and when fighting groups, unlike Sifu, retreat is often recommended. Players would often resort to unorthodox, or grouping techniques, sorcery where possible, and careful melee combat. DS 3's combat shares much fundamentals to Sifu: timing, positioning, deliberate inputs. Offensive opportunities must be taken and balanced with defensive options. DS 3 is definitely a largely different game in feel and design, but their general design in each enemy encounters are relatively similar.
Some of the most difficult DS 3 enemy encounters can pit you against 2 or more strong enemies (not bosses). When confronted with these encounters, players would usually turn to an approach where they attempt to kill them one-at-a-time by aggro-ing only one of them. Other approaches include focusing their offense on a single enemy to eliminate them and make the rest of the battle easier. In this sense, the philosophy of encounter design in DS 3 somewhat lines up along those lines. However, the similarities stop there. In DS 3, these encounters are best avoided and players often will find methods to lure out one strong enemy at a time to avoid an encounter against the 2 enemies at once. This is supported by the level design where these strong enemies are often confined by a small door where they cannot exit, or spaced apart to give opportunities for DS 3 players to lure out one at a time.
In Sifu, these encounters are integrated in the main storyline - they cannot be avoided. The heart of Sifu’s combat lies in this One-vs-All mentality.
Herein lies the virtue of the paragraphs spent on analysing the players’ kit and their offensive/defensive options - because they necessitate this encounter design.
As a primer of the general enemy design of Sifu, there are 3 general types of enemies you will encounter:
- Filler enemies
Thugs, normal fighters. They are the weakest enemies in the game. They have simple attack strings. Emphasis on attack strings. Blocking their attacks will force them to relentless offense, usually ending with guardbreak attacks. Already at this level, players are encouraged to adapt and learn dodging, or better, parrying. These enemies have at least 3 ways to start an attack string. Under heavy fire, they can retaliate with high attacks. Moderately high focus is essential against even filler enemies. This focus is apparent when players begin to fight 10 of them at a time.
- Mini-boss Filler Enemies
Some filler enemies can suddenly become ‘mini-bosses’ when players attempt a deathblow on them. Others are part of an encounter naturally. They have the same skill-set as their filler enemy counterparts with main differences being higher posture, more prone to picking up weapons (more on this later) and higher rate of attack. They are weak on their own, but they represent a more persistent threat in encounters with large amount of enemies. Their presence creates dynamic threat in an encounter and players will develop a ‘Mind’s Eye’ to keep a constant check at these guys in each encounter.
- Tough enemies
There are a few variants to these: Big Grapplers, Women that use kick-oriented moves, Trained martial artists (and their weapon-user counterpart), and strong all-rounder bodyguards. They can never become ‘mini-boss’ variants, but they themself each boast unique moveset, and can appear alongside filler enemies in an encounter. They are generally stronger than mini-boss filler enemies due to this, as they also boast higher overall posture, health and threat to the player.
In most impactful and engaging encounters, a mix of these enemies are to be expected with majority being the filler enemies. This forces the player to develop the sense of ‘Mind’s Eye’, as mentioned, for the strong enemy as they are taking out the weaker enemies.
These relatively stronger enemies (compared to other games) also allow player mastery to develop, as an incentive to master the combat and take down enemies with more ease. It a sense, the strong enemies allow room for the player’s kit to shine and take precedent. At every given circumstance, there is always one or multiple best move to execute.
Of note, strong enemies such as this does mean the game is relatively inaccessible, and is more suited towards hardcore gamers that enjoy learning through trial and error. Thought fittingly, they have designed the game with a resurrection and ageing mechanic so it is suitably appealing to the right gamers as is, so that’s actually well done on their part!
Steps of Advantage: Player/enemy weaponry
So we’ve got a lot of things going on as of now:
Enemies are individually capable, even the filler enemies
Each encounter has several of these plus a few extra tough variants
Player kit is well-equipped to deal with enemies or groups of enemies.
Posture system allows for defensive play and rewards mastery of player’s kit
In short, difficult encounters demands highly capable player’s kit, and consequently, player’s skill. As is, the game is already very loaded with lots of fine tuning and polish to create fresh and difficult combat encounters.
Then comes, weaponry:
On the surface level, weaponry does a few things to the player’s kit such as changing the moveset, range, damage, mitigate chip damage on block, limiting certain moves or altering others. Overall, they provide a temporary power boost akin to a powerup of sorts.
Weaponry itself comes with its own set of rules. As mentioned earlier, tripping or pushing attacks can force the player to drop the weapon and reset the power level.
It has been hinted at previously, that enemies can also pick up weapons too. This plays well into the fundamental design of the player’s kit, as well as the overarching encounter. Enemies with weapons are generally higher threat because:
They can deal more damage
Some of them can be unexpected ranged attacks
So in an encounter, where you’d normally have some Mini-boss filler enemies or Tough enemies generating dynamic threat, some normal filler enemies could also pick up weapons on the ground or tables and suddenly increase in their threat levels albeit at a much more minor level.
This is extremely apparent when the player reaches Stage 3, where filler enemies are generally much more well equipped with typically most, if not all, filler enemies equipped with weaponry.
Players will be demanded to very quickly assess priority targets to take out so as to come out of encounters unscathed, or even better, take the weapons from them and steal an advantage.
This weaponry system is very effective because I believe it serves two purposes for the player to derive enjoyment in combat:
Explicitly gain advantage other than directly taking out enemies (Steps of advantage)
To provide tripping and pushing attacks more ‘power’/usage
The steps of advantage is what I would predict is why combat becomes much more interesting on a moment-to-moment basis. To best explained with an illustration, here is what steps of advantage would look like in an encounter:
Advantage is a very broad term and can refer to anything that lets a party win an encounter. This includes health, weapon, knowledge etc.
This spikey-look of steps of advantage tells a few things:
The enemy can gain advantage (by taking weapons)
The player can remove that advantage (by disarming)
While this is mostly hypothetical at the moment, it is my theory that the spikier this steps of advantage is, the more interesting a combat encounter can be.
Although health is the obvious determinant of advantage in action-oriented games, what this theory seeks to prove is that, in Sifu, with temporary weapons that can be picked up, broken and stolen: advantage relating to weapons is a volatile factor that can be affected by the player. In Sifu, there exists more variance of advantage other than enemy count and overall health.
Of course, in more standard action-oriented games, the graph can still continue to have variations as attacks can often be unexpected, or defensive options are mis-timed. That’s how engagement and danger creates excitement in an encounter.
This is also why I think Boss Fights in some games have multiple phases. The ‘second phase’ is meant to be a form of equaliser where, under the threat of low health, the boss power-ups even further to raise the threat level to their advantage once again, resulting in an interesting encounters.
The ‘second phase’ could also introduce new boss moves that the player has yet to know. In that sense, knowledge could also be a factor into the steps of advantage.
However, I believe that requires much more study for a general theory of steps of advantage and this write-up is lengthy enough as is.
The final take away would be that, introduction of weaponry creates mini-variations in advantage, either increasing or decreasing in favour of the player aside in shorter timespans than just enemy death/respawn. These striations create variety and interesting encounters because fights don’t have a simple trend towards the player’s advantage over the course of an encounter.
"I can do this all day”
Finally, the ability to regenerate health upon enemy takedowns is what I think a very great design decision to reward players with skillful play. Throughout action games, there are numerous ways to reward health such as:
1) Occasional dropped ‘powerups’ from enemy kills
The main drawback with this design is its inconsistency without proper tuning and players may feel frustrated that health ‘powerups’ are not dropped at times when its needed, even if it drops at consistent rates.
2) Use an item to restore health
Think potions, from JRPGs or Souls Series. I think this is a suboptimal design as it does not mesh well with Sifu’s high octane combat. Implementing an item to restore health can potentially encourage players to play extremely defensively which is not the ideal player behaviour we want to encourage in Sifu (well demonstrated by forcing players to rely less on blocks, and learn dodges and parries). Players may be tempted to retreat and to heal which can detract from the ideal feel of the game as well.
3) Reward health based on performance in each encounter
As a kind of tangent to scoring systems in JRPG where the player is awarded a grade for how well they did in an encounter, examples being Final Fantasy 15 and Tales of Arise, a similar system may be built into Sifu to award skillful play and give rewards accordingly. The main problem with this is it detracts away from creating meaningful advantage and skillful play is not rewarded as prominently within the encounter. It might also be confusing to the player to what is considered as ‘skillful play’ if all they got is a grade and health awarded respectively. Tying health gain on enemy takedowns is a much more direct form of feedback and easier to tell players, “Hey, you can recover health if you kill guys without taking damage!”.
In many martial arts movies, the protagonist is at a constant disadvantage with no room to breathe. This is well demonstrated by the large number of enemies against one opponent. Consequently, it is also satisfying to watch the protagonist defeat the entire enemy forces one at a time, methodologically and with ease.
In Sifu, the lack of a healing option helps cement this high stakes, ‘constant disadvantage’ feeling present in martial arts movies. The player therefore must be methodological in their methods, patience and precise strikes are advantageous.
Finally, the lack of a healing option is a smart design decision as it is in accordance to the design of other roguelike games like Hades and Curse of the Dead Gods albeit with minor differences as in Hades, you will occasionally encounter shops where you can spend a currency to recover health. Though in Sifu, there is a currency (level score, age or exp) that can be spent at shrines but it cannot be used to explicitly restore health, only to upgrade the amount of health recovered enemy takedown.
The ability to restore health on enemy takedown gives a feeling of ‘one-step-at-a-time’ to the player, in that mistakes can be mitigated under good play, and perfect plays can fully recover them from a bad situation. In that sense, it could be said that this design works well under the steps of advantage style of combat.
Flow of (Melee) Combat: One-vs-One
It goes without saying that, this may not apply to ranged combat, ie. FPS games - I have yet to fully study those genre of games so these concepts only revolve around close melee combat.
Flow of Combat here refers to the general actions a player or enemy takes on a moment-to-moment basis. Said actions are taken in hopes of allow the respective party to gain or maintain advantage in accordance with the steps of advantage theory.
As an overarching, hand-wavey concept. Combat between two individuals can be described as an exchange of action and reaction. In many martial arts movies, this is shown in exchanging blows, where each attack is itself an attempt to exploit an opportunity or gain an advantage, but said attack may leave other openings, to which the enemy may exploit and consecutively leave themselves to other openings, that the first party may exploit… in a very long loop.
In video games, this is simplified to what I postulated as the attacking and defending phase.
Enemy Attacks > Player Defends > Enemy in recovery phase (Defends) > Player Attacks > Net profit!
This, like the martial arts movies equivalent, goes in a loop repeatedly, starting and stopping sporadically. Variety is injected by having the boss execute different attacks, parameters of the attacking/defending phase, and other systems that support a game's combat mechanic. Perhaps some attacks have long recovery phase duration, others are short. Maybe some attacks string into other attacks. Other factors such as the enemies’ properties can also affect it such as rate of attack, number of player attacks before they retaliate, etc.
In the Monster Hunter Series, monsters in that game are uniquely designed such that while the player does still undergo an attacking and defending phase combat style, one of their unique fundamental iteration they took on this concept is the fact that the enemies are rarely ever in a recovery phase (easily identified by the enemies’ constant state of superarmour) and the enemies usually string consecutive attacks very often. Monster Hunter therefore develops a unique sense of combat revolving around finding opportunities and this is largely emphasised by the game’s iconic weapon: The Greatsword. But let’s not get go off-track.
Usually in boss fights, very rarely, will there ever be an optimal situation where a player attacks while the enemy is attacking. Ignoring high player skill and specific offense methods, the player has limited health and will usually be at higher risk when taking that decision (ie. The player has lower combined health pool than the enemy). This leads to that very simple back-and-forth combat found in most, if not all, action games. By all means, this is a simple but effective design, even I do not know of good alternatives yet. Attack when you have an opportunity to gain advantage. Defend when you are at risk to maintain those advantages. This tug-of-war concept is supported by the need to offset balance, and maintain advantage in a battle. In action games such as Sekiro, Batman: Arkham City and Sifu, this balance and advantage is largely determined by health.
Games that do not have an action and reaction usually do not result in this attacking and defending phase concept arising. Games such as SHUMPs, bullet hells come to mind where both parties are attacking at the same time, but there is rarely a direct clash-of-blades that can upset a balance, or directly grant an advantage to the player.
Now that I’ve briefly mentioned my theory on one-vs-one combat, let me explain my personal theory as to why, in Sifu, their combat shines very well: even at the one versus two.
Paper to Practice: One-vs-Two in Sifu
Even though I’ve mentioned Sifu has a One-vs-All heart to its combat, the combat already shines even at the lowest level, at one versus two. When everything that has been discussed all comes together, even combat against two enemies are difficult, engaging and fun. This is why I think so:
To note, I have yet to study player behaviour in combat extensively, and all of this is postulation territory. I am always open for conversations where perhaps, this theory can be further refined. Without further udo, let’s start.
The biggest difference between a one-vs-one and a one-versus-two is the obvious fact that, there is a secondary attacker on you. This creates an interesting addition to the attacking and defending phase. Here is the abstract illustration of it:
And this is a clip of it happening in action.
Introduction of another party breaks up the standard attacking and defending phase by having players be constantly vigilant and analytic of the entire battle scene. I think this works well because it emphasises a fundamental aspect of (game) combat: analysis and decision.
Analysis is a player skill. It tests the capability to read visual cues and react accordingly. In a real-time battle, analysis is a constant effort with decisions being made in parallel based on the current battle state at any given moment.
In one of my favourite game genres: rhythm games, this skill is specifically called ‘reading’ or ‘sightreading’ for musicians. The ability to quickly assess and break down notes into ‘chunks’ to play in constant flow.
This concept is integral in the action and reaction fundamental concept to combat, such as it is in the attacking and defending phase concept in one-versus-one combat or its unique iteration in the one-versus-two in Sifu. Analysis is a reflection of the player’s need to react to attacks at any given moment.
Therefore in combat, a player is at a constant state of analysis and making (hopefully) intentional decisions given the state of battle at any given moment. In a one-versus-one setting, this is relatively easy. In a one-versus-two setting, this is where Sifu shines.
Sifu's AI management is a bit unique, in that they there is technically ample breathing room between enemy attacks. Similarly with games that are focused on multiple-enemy encounters such as Batman: Arkham City, enemy aggression in Sifu is relatively toned down such that there is never more than 2 enemies attacking at the same time. This is an important design decision as to allow for micro-analysis at each change of battle state.
The addition of 2 enemies alone already creates a myriad of possible interesting encounters at any time.
By carefully controlling AI aggression, Sifu managed to create compelling encounter scenes where enemies rarely overwhelm the player unless the player is specifically cornered against a wall (this is according to my observations). Why they design the AI behaviour in such a way is up for interpretation, but my guess is that it makes the fighting feeling 'fair'.
In a game where dodging and riposte mid-combat is important, the AI aggression might have been controlled so as to give opportunities for players to exploit. Specifically in Sifu, most enemies only engage in suppressing or surprise aggression as shown in the illustration above. This may because those forms of aggression only have one actively attacking enemy at a time. This design decision emphasises intentional defense.
As mentioned, enemy aggression switches to hyper or relentless aggression when players are backed up against a wall where two enemies can attack simultaneously. I believe they do such design so as to encourage environmental awareness. This design decision emphasises player kit mastery and pushing/tripping attacks.
Enemy attacks are also snappy and do not linger. Meaning there are no 'breathe attacks' with damage-over-time effects. Attacks generally have short wind-up time and its active frames are very short lasting. This makes enemy attacks very discrete and identifiable to defend against and does not overwhelm the player with a barrage of attacks. In fact, the enemies actually punish the player for button-mashing by blocking player attacks and counter-attacking viciously. This design plays emphasis into a difficult but fair combat design, encouraging analysis by giving prompt warning to players to dodge incoming attacks.
So In Sifu, even at the one-versus-two, the enemy is usually constantly on the offensive with little time to breathe. But their aggression can always be deterred provide the player has not put themselves in such a bad, overwhelming disadvantage. The general fast-paced combat is well controlled, and the enemy's total-attack-per-second is kept in a constant check such that skilled players do not feel that it is unfair or overwhelmed.
Paper to Practice: One-vs-All in Sifu
Herein, this leads to the final conclusions as to why I think Sifu is extremely well-design and polished on many nuances to derive a feeling of one-vs-all.
Sifu's difficulty is reflected in the player's overall kit strength, which is strong. One of the strongest advantages the player has is the ability to high dodge from all direction, at any time. This ability is available from the get-go, and is what I believe to be the foundation for the entire game's combat system to be built upon.
This includes the enemy's skills and attacks, the player's corresponding counterattacks, the posture system, pacing of the combat, enemy aggression and additional systems to encourage players out of reliance on just high dodge.
Just as how enemies can retaliate, the player can also do likewise. A single high dodge can negate some attack strings from filler enemies to take them out quickly. A well-timed parry can give you opportunities to push them to other enemies for crowd control. When you're going against 10 or more so enemies, this is vital.
Be wary of your surroundings, you don't want to be backed up against the wall. Move around if you need to. Or better yet, move them around. The player's kit is well equipped to deal with most circumstances with a well-timed parry or a dodge. Though when the player's kit is strong, the enemies are scaled up to meet the challenge. This is where most of the player mastery is derived from.
From when the game begins, the player’s kit is simple enough to quickly pick up with a strong staple defense and staple offense that can fight back and defeat enemies. These represent the true fundamentals with additional specific offense and specific defense options to add flavour to the combat.
The starting player's kit includes light attack combos, heavy attack combos, a pushing attack, a tripping attack and all your defensive options. The player’s starting kit alone encompasses the entire game’s combat mechanics along with the capability to begin utilising them. As the player plays and learns, they can learn additional skill that supplements their kit, or add additional utility, or additional flair to their gameplay.
Players will begin to learn how their attacks can affect the enemies and keep them in control. Pushing attacks keep enemies away, tripping attacks keep them down and unarmed which becomes prevalent when they start arming themselves with weapons. Target priority becomes important.
In extended crowded fights then, the player will begin to learn endurance and continue to hone their mastery of defense and offense. Anyone can attack at any time. The player must be ready! As long as the player is controlled, they will not go down. One-by-one they fall.
And just when things are going well, they take a turn for the worst. One of them gets up, stronger than ever. In a bad situation, perhaps the player looks to grab some breathing room and vault over a table, or push enemies away. The intensity never drops.
Sifu's combat is difficult for most, but for the players whom have learned the fundamentals and broke through some of the first hurdles, it is one hell of a satisfying game. When your blood slows down, you look back and reflect on the havoc you leave behind.
Nothing less for your father - for vengeance.