Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Finishing is trivial and winning is not. The item distribution is designed to take the lead off you, so the skill being tested is holding first place rather than reaching it.

Story missions checkpoint constantly and aim assist does most of the shooting. The spikes are the driving and the gold medal objectives, which nobody is obliged to take.

Largos and tarrs will wreck a careless corral overnight, which is as close as this gets to a fail state.

The shooting is forgiving and Dead Eye forgives the rest. The difficulty is deliberate friction — animations you cannot cancel, a horse you have to keep alive, and mission failure for stepping outside the script.

Combat that yields immediately to a difficulty slider, wrapped around a preparation system the game quietly assumes you will ignore.

Reversing a trailer into a bay is the skill ceiling and the fatigue timer is the only pressure. Damage costs money rather than progress.

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.

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

Difficulty is a slider, and the systems are exploitable enough that a determined player can break the game open by hour five. What is left is a very long walk.

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.