Sifu shows off its new Student and Master difficulty levels

Choose your own fisticuffs with a new update, including the “original” level of difficulty

Sifu players who want a smoother go of this whole revenge thing will be able to select the much-easier Student difficulty with a free update on Tuesday, May 3. With this setting, you’ll face opponents who use less complicated combos and aren’t as antsy; you’ll also have more health, and age slower as you fall and rise again to ultimately finish the job.

On the flipside, developer Sloclap is also introducing a terrifying — yet potentially thrilling — Master difficulty for honed players who want to go up against new, more “intricate” boss attack patterns. And that even goes for the hired goons: the developers use the word “relentless,” so expect zero chill. The no-hit YouTube runs will be insane.

Or, if you’re just now coming into Sifu and you want to see what the original fuss was all about, there’s always the middle ground, Disciple difficulty, which is the “classic Sifu experience” from launch. Remember Eric’s struggles? That review was a nail-biter!

You can see all three difficulty settings — Student, Disciple, and Master — in action.

This difficulty update is actually just the first stop on the 2022 Sifu roadmap — we’re also getting updates in summer, fall, and winter. There’s a visual recap below, but to quickly round it all up, the updates range from gameplay modifiers to a replay editor to combat arenas. Outfits too, of course! Dressing up is a key part of the power fantasy.

Taking a moment to stop and reflect on this game, it’s nice to know that Sloclap can continue supporting it all year. These additions, particularly reaching players on the lower and even higher ends of the skill spectrum, further solidify Sifu as a great action game.

Speaking of, Sifu had over a million players as of March 3, 2022.

As for difficulty in games in general, I’ll keep it as short as possible: more often than not, I appreciate working up to the hardest, most brutal challenges in video games in a way that feels within reach, not hopeless. With that in mind, flexibility is often the key — which is why I am all for Sifu rounding itself out with two new thoughtful-sounding difficulties.

Depending on the situation, I am not opposed to temporarily “evening the odds” through better character builds or tactics, accessibility modifiers, online tips ‘n’ tricks, you name it; we all have our breaking points. I’m also perfectly okay with the idea of running into a brick wall for hours on end out of pure spite. There’s a time and a place for both!

Jordan Devore

Jordan is a founding member of Destructoid and poster of seemingly random pictures. They are anything but random.