Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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.

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

Difficulty is a clock rather than a setting: everything you do to get stronger also makes the timer worse. Monsoon runs end in seconds when they end.

A bullet hell with a generous dodge roll and completely ungenerous boss patterns. The unlock grind is doing double duty as the difficulty curve.

Three in-game days on a shrinking map, so the usual answer to a FromSoftware wall — go somewhere else and come back stronger — is the one thing the clock will not sell you.

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

Rhythm violence at speeds that stop being readable. The later levels are memorised rather than reacted to, whatever it feels like at the time.

Two games glued together, and the management half is where a run is actually lost — a starving flock undoes a perfectly good dungeon.

Wider than Hades and more demanding with it: two escape routes, a resource economy on the surface, and bosses that punish the sprint-attack habit the first game rewarded.

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.