Ask for the shape of the challenge.

A simulator with a full wall of assists in front of it, so the same corner can be a formality or a genuine test depending on what you left switched on.

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.

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.

Hard in a way that always moves forward: you lose the run but never the hour, because failure is the currency the next attempt is bought with.

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.

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

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.

The build carries the game. A netrunner or a sandevistan trivialises fights that a scattered stat spread makes unwinnable, and the difficulty setting only changes the numbers underneath that.

Machines have components you are meant to shoot off with the right element. A player who ignores that fights the same Thunderjaw for ten minutes with the wrong arrows.

Generous dodges and plug-in chips that can automate half the combat, so the demand is low until Very Hard, where one hit ends you and the chip build becomes the game.