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.

You can save anywhere for a resource cost, which turns the escape sequences into a planning problem: no soul links means no checkpoints, and the game does not hand them back.

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.

Momentum platforming with hitboxes that reward commitment and punish hesitation. Funky Mode exists because the late levels ask for a great deal.

NES difficulty with modern checkpoints — and you can smash the checkpoints for gold, which is the game’s whole attitude in one mechanic.

The shield parry replaces Eternal’s resource juggling, so the demand moves from managing three meters to reading incoming attacks. The difficulty sliders are unusually granular about which of those you want.

One hit kills, restarts land in under a second, and momentum is mandatory — stopping to think is usually the thing that kills you.

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.