Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Beautiful and forgiving right up to the escape sequences, which convert a gentle metroidvania into a memorisation test with no warning at all.

Two players, one screen, no difficulty setting. The hard part is coordination, and the game restarts you both a second after it goes wrong.

Combat is scored on the beat and will still let you win off it. Playing to the rhythm is the difference between a rank and a mess.

A lullaby until the drop speed crosses whatever your reading threshold happens to be, at which point it becomes a pure reflex test with a very good soundtrack.

A blockbuster that expects to be finished, with the actual demands parked in optional bosses you can walk past without the story noticing.

Five stances that each want a different defensive habit, on a difficulty curve gentle enough that you can reach the end still using the first one.

The genre’s shape at a fraction of its hostility — and the only one on this shelf that ships with a menu that will hand you a gun and skip the fight.

Every individual mechanic is trivial; the difficulty is entirely another human being who cannot hear what you are shouting.

Swinging is forgiving by design. The spikes are the crowded arena fights on Ultimate, where one unblocked rifle burst is most of a health bar.

A metroidvania that fights with summoned spirits on cooldowns rather than a weapon, so encounters are about rotation and spacing instead of stamina.