Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Parry-first combat with windows tight enough that blocking on reflex fails and blocking on rhythm works.

The EMMI zones are one-hit deaths with a counter window measured in frames, and the bosses expect dodges on reaction rather than pattern.

You can finish it by mashing. The difficulty lives entirely in the gap between finishing it and playing it, and the game is happy to let you ignore that gap forever.

Modern checkpoint generosity on the surface, with a completion layer underneath that wants every box and no deaths across a level built to cause both.

Two hits and you are in your underwear, three and the level restarts, and the game expects a second full loop before it will show you an ending.

One hit kills, restarts land in under a second, and momentum is mandatory — stopping to think is usually the thing that kills you.

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 demons are a resource puzzle solved at a hundred and twenty beats per minute; stop moving to think and you are already dead.

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.

It takes the one thing roguelikes normally give you — time to think — and puts it on a metronome.