One of the key mechanics in Sifu is ageing. You start at age 20 and have to finish all five of the game's levels before you hit age 75. Although this may sound simple, it's actually a lot more complicated than you might think and takes some paying attention to.
Make like Johnny Lawrence and skip all that dumb learning – I've died enough times in Sifu to know exactly how it works and let you know what you're in for when you start your journey. Prepare to see your life fly by, because this is how ageing works in Sifu.
How Ageing Works In Sifu
When you first begin Sifu, you'll start at age 20, which is the base age. When you're this young, you'll have the most resistance to damage, but deal the least amount of it which will reverse as you get older, making you a glass cannon. That may sound daunting, but it only really gets noticeable as you reach the later ages. Whenever you die, you'll lose a year of your life, ageing when you revive and looking noticeably older.
The maximum age is 75. That means you have 55 in-game years to beat the whole game. Easy right? Wrong. That doesn't mean that you have 55 chances to die, as Sifu is a little bit crueler than that. Instead, every time you die you'll see the death counter rise up by one. So when you die for the first time at age 20, you'll revive at age 21 and see the number one next to a skull. The next time you die, the number next ot the skull will raise up to a two, meaning it's added two lives to your age and put you at age 23.
This will carry on the more you die, meaning that if you're stuck on a boss fight, you're going to see that number rise fast. Although it might seem a bit unfair and like the number should just go up by one at a time, there are some ways to combat it and make things a little bit fairer on yourself.
The death counter will go down whenever you beat a group of enemies, or a particularly strong one. So if you beat what Sifu would essentially class as a mini-boss, you'll see the counter go down. This means that as you play more and more of Sifu, you'll rarely see that death counter rise up all that much, as you'll be pushing it down whenever you clear a room.
Every time you die you'll also get the chance to spend some of your experience points on new moves, so there's another advantage to it as well. Besides that, you can only buy moves at statues or in the hideout, so it can actually be a positive thing to die in battle. Take our advice and try and spend the XP on permanent moves as much as possible, though.
If you're struggling to get past a level because your age is too high and you simply can't get to the end without being frail and old, the best bit of advice is to replay an earlier level to try and get that age down. Your age saves at the end of a level, so the next time you restart, you'll be whatever age you finished the previous level as. This means by replaying levels and shaving off some years, you'll set yourself up for a better chance next time.
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