Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Aim matters less than knowing what the other team can do to you, and the roster is large enough that this takes a very long time to learn.

Aggressive rather than punishing — dying costs you almost nothing, so the walls are boss-shaped and the rest is spectacle.

Building is a second game bolted to the first, played at a speed that looks like a bug, and the mode that removes it is where most people should start.

Nothing is hidden and nothing is easy: every technique in the game is visible from the first match and takes hundreds of hours in the hands.

The hardest thing here is unlearning defence — you cannot outlast anything, and the deflect window is the entire game.

The movement is the skill ceiling and nothing in the game mentions it — the players beating you are using techniques that were never taught, only tolerated.

There is no block button — parrying is a direction plus an attack, aimed at the incoming blow, and the game tells you this once and then assumes it.

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

Nothing but boss fights, each a bullet hell and a duel at once. Phases checkpoint until the late ones, which do not.

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