Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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

The one that attacks your resources rather than your reflexes — your maximum health falls every time you die, and the ambushes are designed around you not knowing they are there.

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.

Pace notes, no rewind on the harder settings, and a damage model that ends a rally on one bad corner. The hardest driving in the catalogue by a distance.

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

Its difficulty is crowd control, not duels: the game throws groups and ranged attackers at you constantly, and the second world doubles the population.

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.

Enormous and completely indifferent — most of its walls are optional, and it will never tell you which ones.

You choose which limb to cut off, which means every fight is a decision about what you want to be wearing afterwards rather than only about surviving it.

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