Ask for the shape of the challenge.

A hero shooter that lets you fly and climb walls, so the sightlines are three-dimensional in a way that punishes shooter habits learned on flat maps.

Aim matters less than knowing what the other team can do to you, and the roster is large enough that this takes a very long time to learn.

The inputs were made easy so the system could be hard. Roman Cancel is four mechanics behind one button, and every match above the low floors is decided by who used it correctly.

Aggressive rather than punishing — dying costs you almost nothing, so the walls are boss-shaped and the rest is spectacle.

The combos are the advertised difficulty and the easy part. The real one is movement — walking, backdashing and sidestepping are the skill, and no mode in the game teaches them.

Building is a second game bolted to the first, played at a speed that looks like a bug, and the mode that removes it is where most people should start.

Wirebugs give every weapon a get-out-of-jail move, which makes this the entry that will actually teach you the series rather than survive you learning it.

The walls are build checks rather than skill checks. The tutorial helicopter and the first real boss both exist to say that the fight is decided in the garage.

Sixty hours of systems the game never explains, hiding behind a weapon whose fourth input you have not found yet.

The most welcoming fighting game ever made, sitting on top of the most undocumented one — the defensive techniques that decide real matches are never mentioned anywhere in it.