Sifu’s tale of vengeance sees an unnamed protagonist travelling through a city to take down the five martial arts masters who killed their father. While the first two roadblocks in the game, Fajar and Sean, are certainly challenging in their own right, neither of them hold a candle to the game’s third boss. Say hello to Kuroki, also known as Sifu’s run killer. Here’s everything you need to know about how to beat Kuroki in Sifu.
Where Is Kuroki?
Kuroki is the boss of Sifu’s third level, The Museum. As a former professional assassin turned artist, Kuroki is holding an exhibition in the museum, though she just so happens to be protected by a personal security squad dozens of men strong. Once you’ve fought your way through the armed guards, you’ll be face to face with Kuroki and the toughest challenge of the game so far. To defeat her, we’ll need to do a bit of planning.
How To Defeat Kuroki – Preparation
Sifu’s level design works in such a way that, once you’ve cleared certain milestones in a level, you can utilize shortcuts to reach later parts of the level much quicker, and The Museum possibly has the biggest skip of them all. Once you’ve beaten the second miniboss on this level, after a series of weird dream sequences, you’ll unlock the key to the elevator in the Museum’s starting room, which will take you straight to the boss fight. Assuming you’ve already reached Kuroki beforehand when reading this, here’s what you need to do: Restart from the first level.
Sifu’s levels are based on one consistent run, with the upgrades, abilities and deaths you accrue across the run persisting from one level to the next. Now’s the time to return to the first level, where you have no upgrades, and respec your character to ensure they’re in a good position to deal with levels 3, 4 and 5. It’s also a good chance to grind XP for new moves that you can permanently unlock, even if you’ve already been following these boss guides along. The vertical strikes focus attack, the leg sweep focus attack, environmental interactions, the slide kick and the weapon durability upgrade are all great skills to permanently buy with XP and will serve you well going forward.
On the first level, The Squats, you’ll want to avoid the shortcut at the start of the level which takes you to just before the boss fight. Going the regular route yields more shrines and the chance to earn level score, meaning more upgrade potential. There’s three shrines, and you’ll want to spend two on focus meter upgrades, then a third on “parrying increases structure damage”, as this is the easiest level to do so due to the lower level score requirement of 4000. This upgrade makes the final boss fight easier, so grab it if you want to carry this run on to the finale. At this stage, it’s also possible to beat the first level with no deaths, so try to aim for that or as close to that as possible to set yourself up well for the next levels.
Revisiting The Club is your next stop, and it’s here that you’ll want to focus on building your score so that, by the time you’ve cleared the dancefloor, you’re close to 1200 points. If you’re not, head into the next room, batter anyone who shows up then return to the dancefloor. Use the shrine and purchase the “avoiding and parries increase focus meter” upgrade, take the shortcut and do the same in the training area. Progress through the level as normal then purchase the final version of the dodging increases parry meter upgrade at the shrine just before fighting Sean.
Hopefully, you’ll make it to the museum with a full raft of upgrades and an age below 25. The run is by no means over if your age is at around 30, but the younger you are, the better. Now, travel through the level as normal, making sure to grab the shrine on floor two in the room with the huge, spinning ink pen. Opt for weapon durability if you can, as you’ll need to be 25 or younger to claim it. Weapon damage as an XP upgrade from the shrine works too though. Continue on to floor three, and when you come out into the central room, you should be able to open the door to your left with a keycard that you’ve claimed from already beating the first miniboss.
A lone woman will be waiting for you, picking up a staff off the wall. Defeat her, ideally by using the vertical strikes focus attack and combos that push her into the wall for max damage (light, light, heavy), then claim the staff off her body. Also, take some time to appreciate the sweet Absolver art and masks in this area. It’s one for the real OGs, that.
Continue up to floor four from the nearby stairwell, then follow the path around to the next shrine, making sure to acquire either another weapon durability upgrade if you’re young enough or a weapon damage upgrade if you have the XP. Once you’ve done that, circle back around and use the lift. There’s a shrine just before Kuroki that you should use to buy a focus upgrade, which will automatically fill your focus gauge to full at two and a half bars.
Now, it’s finally time to fight Kuroki for real.
How To Defeat Kuroki – Phase 1
In short, this is possibly the second hardest challenge in the whole game save for the final boss. Kuroki sports a kunai attached to a chain, and shows no issue with twirling it around the arena in an attempt to cut you to pieces. Spoiler alert, but it will work more often than not.
Kuroki’s main combo strings offer a mix of high and low attacks, which make for a dastardly combination if you’re trying to spot dodge (L1+any direction). One wrong move and it’s hard to get back into the swing of dodging, meaning you’ll be taking a lot of damage. These high and low attacks have a huge range too, which makes it hard to close the distance.
When you do manage to get on the inside, Kuroki can either use a series of vertical slices, a jumping attack that hits low, making it hard to dodge on a reactionary basis, or she can jump away, slicing the air as she does. All of these moves are bad news, making Kuroki one of the most dangerous foes you’ll encounter during your time with Sifu.
Immediately, run after her and hit a vertical strikes focus attack, which will stun her for a decent amount of time, allowing you to do about a third of the damage needed to her structure bar. With the staff in hand, you can block most of her attacks without having to worry too much about your own structure. Play safe, dodge or parry where you can and use any focus attacks you can muster to damage her structure as much as possible. You’ll probably take a death or two here, but persevere, do what you can and don’t be afraid to spam focus attacks. Eventually, phase one of Kuroki will fall.
How To Defeat Kuroki – Phase 2
Second stage Kuroki is a completely different beast from the first version. While the original iteration of Kuroki is calmer and serene, stage 2 takes place in a tumultuous tornado against what can only be described as a demonic ninja assassin. While that sounds way harder than normal Kuroki, this version is actually more tame by comparison. She’s no slouch, but the main reason you’ll hit a game over here is because of the accrued deaths in the previous phase.
Kuroki has a few main attacks. She’ll run towards the player and throw out a flurry of attacks, all of which can be avoided by spot-dodging which will build your focus gauge massively. After the flurry, she’ll take a step back and either do a full jump backwards, throwing out knives when she does, or jump back in with a huge dropkick that can knock you to the floor. At a distance, she can either throw more knives at you, or dash towards you to deal a high damage attack.
In comparison to her previous stage, most of Kuroki’s moves are incredibly telegraphed in this phase, so it shouldn’t be too much of a bother to dodge and/or parry her attacks and sneak in some quick combos in between. As for her knife throwing, you can grab the weapons out of the air with L1 (if you have the skill) and throw them back for light damage, but dodging allows for easy meter build. Once you have the two bars of focus meter, throw out a vertical strikes focus attack and revel in the extended stun time.
Again, Kuroki’s second phase isn’t as intimidating as her first phase, even if she’ll definitely mess you up if you give her the chance, but keep your composure and use your focus attacks and eventually, you’ll triumph over the hardest challenge yet. Time for the fourth level, The Tower, and Jinfeng.
Sifu is available on PC, PS5, and PS4.
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