Ask for the shape of the challenge.

The gentlest soulslike on the shelf, largely because the AI companion it gives you will happily solo a boss you cannot beat.

Souls stamina and checkpoints with a gun in your hands, so the dodge is still the answer but the aim decides whether the dodge was needed.

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.

Souls-shaped in its checkpoints and parry windows without souls-shaped stakes. Grandmaster punishes the block-heavy habits the lower difficulties let you keep.

Hazard 5 with four dwarves is a coordination problem. Solo with Bosco is a slower, different game that the hazard tiers do not really account for.

Turn-based with a parry or dodge on every incoming attack, so a fight you have the stats for can still be lost by hands. Learning a boss’s rhythm is the build.

The friendliest the series has been — focus strikes, a mount that finds the monster for you — and the tempered fights at the end still ask for the matchup knowledge Monster Hunter always did.

Modern checkpoint generosity on the surface, with a completion layer underneath that wants every box and no deaths across a level built to cause both.

The single-player is genuinely welcoming; ranked is a decade of other people’s practice delivered eight frames at a time.

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.