Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Progression is gated behind bosses you are expected to build an arena for, and the game tells you almost none of that. Hardmode is a difficulty setting you trigger permanently, by hand.

A game about item literacy: the run is won or lost by whether you recognise a pickup you have never seen before.

Short and dense, and almost nothing in it is labelled — you learn what an item does by eating it and finding out.

Heavy attacks with no cancel, instant-death platforming, and guilt fragments that tax you for dying exactly where you were already struggling.

Everything the 3D games do, minus a camera and plus a pit — the second axis of movement is gone, so a mistimed roll usually means falling somewhere worse.

Aggressive rather than punishing — dying costs you almost nothing, so the walls are boss-shaped and the rest is spectacle.

Driving it is a fraction of it. The car arrives on a setup that is wrong for the conditions, the game does not say so, and a lap that felt fine can be two seconds off because the tyre pressures were.

The aircraft are modelled well past where the tutorials stop. An instrument approach in an airliner is a procedure most people learn outside the game entirely.

Directional swordfighting against two opponents is closer to a fighting game than an RPG, saving costs a drink, and the opening hours hand you a peasant who cannot read, ride or fight.

The difficulty is mostly geography — knowing which door to take is worth more than any weapon in the game.