Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Bullet-hell reflexes bolted to roguelike stakes — the two hardest things to hold simultaneously for two uninterrupted hours.

A directional parry replaces the roll as the answer to almost everything, and the game is markedly better once it clicks and markedly worse until it does.

Slow, heavy and unforgiving — one bullet from someone you never saw ends thirty minutes, and the correct play is usually to not take the fight.

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

Every death ages you, and an old master dies in two hits. The run-level economy is what punishes learning a boss the slow way.

The mage hunts turn every boss into a chase across the map, which trades the first game’s clean duels for something closer to attrition.

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

Building is a second game bolted to the first, played at a speed that looks like a bug, and the mode that removes it is where most people should start.

Two hits and you are in your underwear, three and the level restarts, and the game expects a second full loop before it will show you an ending.

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.