Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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.

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.

Build orders are the curve, and the campaigns teach almost none of what the game actually asks for. The hard AI does not forget its economy while it fights.

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.

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

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.

Aim is only half of it — the generation means the run you get may simply not contain the item you needed, and the game will not tell you that either.

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.

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.

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.