Ask for the shape of the challenge.

There is no block button — parrying is a direction plus an attack, aimed at the incoming blow, and the game tells you this once and then assumes it.

Parry-first combat with windows tight enough that blocking on reflex fails and blocking on rhythm works.

The hardest thing here is unlearning defence — you cannot outlast anything, and the deflect window is the entire game.

Sekiro’s deflection on a 2D plane. Chip damage means blocking is not a plan, and every boss is a rhythm you learn on frames rather than a health bar you widdle down.

You can finish it by mashing. The difficulty lives entirely in the gap between finishing it and playing it, and the game is happy to let you ignore that gap forever.

Runs are fast and deaths are total. Boss cells stack modifiers until a loadout that felt comfortable dies to two hits, and there is no difficulty setting hiding under them.

The world is kinder than Dark Souls and the bosses are considerably meaner — almost all of the difficulty has moved into the fog gates.

Steady, honest pressure plus a map that makes you earn the right to know where you are standing.

A parry game wearing a Souls coat: dodging alone will carry you for two hours and then stop working entirely.

The EMMI zones are one-hit deaths with a counter window measured in frames, and the bosses expect dodges on reaction rather than pattern.