Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Faster than Hollow Knight and less forgiving with it. Enemies crowd, healing is a commitment rather than a pause, and the early bosses assume reflexes the first game spent thirty hours building.

Every death ages you, and an old master dies in two hits. The run-level economy is what punishes learning a boss the slow way.

Pace notes, no rewind on the harder settings, and a damage model that ends a rally on one bad corner. The hardest driving in the catalogue by a distance.

Bullet-hell reflexes bolted to roguelike stakes — the two hardest things to hold simultaneously for two uninterrupted hours.

It punishes the instinct to retreat — the only way to get your health back is to keep hitting the thing that took it.

Directional swordfighting against two opponents is closer to a fighting game than an RPG, saving costs a drink, and the opening hours hand you a peasant who cannot read, ride or fight.

Rhythm violence at speeds that stop being readable. The later levels are memorised rather than reacted to, whatever it feels like at the time.

The world is kinder than Dark Souls and the bosses are considerably meaner — almost all of the difficulty has moved into the fog gates.

A parry game wearing a Souls coat: dodging alone will carry you for two hours and then stop working entirely.

The difficulty is mostly geography — knowing which door to take is worth more than any weapon in the game.