Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Limb severing means aiming at the right thing rather than the middle of it. Impossible mode allows one save slot and no second chances at all.

Souls-shaped in its checkpoints and parry windows without souls-shaped stakes. Grandmaster punishes the block-heavy habits the lower difficulties let you keep.

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.

Runs are fast and deaths are total. Boss cells stack modifiers until a loadout that felt comfortable dies to two hits, and there is no difficulty setting hiding under them.

Turn-based with a parry or dodge on every incoming attack, so a fight you have the stats for can still be lost by hands. Learning a boss’s rhythm is the build.

Souls stamina and checkpoints with a gun in your hands, so the dodge is still the answer but the aim decides whether the dodge was needed.

The gentlest soulslike on the shelf, largely because the AI companion it gives you will happily solo a boss you cannot beat.

Ordinary play is gentle. The route the game remembers you taking turns two of its fights into some of the strictest bullet hell in the catalogue.

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.

The friendliest the series has been — focus strikes, a mount that finds the monster for you — and the tempered fights at the end still ask for the matchup knowledge Monster Hunter always did.