Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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

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.

Creature collection with a base-automation layer underneath it. The difficulty sliders are unusually honest about the fact that the grind is the game.

Reflex mode quietly saves every blown infiltration. Turn it off and the enemy adapts to whatever you did last mission, which is where the game gets interesting.

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.

Level gating does the work encounter design would: a mercenary four levels above you is unkillable, and the game’s answer is more hours rather than a better plan.

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.

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.

Hazard 5 with four dwarves is a coordination problem. Solo with Bosco is a slower, different game that the hazard tiers do not really account for.

A platform fighter with three attack buttons and no movelists to memorise, which makes it the cheapest way to find out whether the genre is for you.