Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Wider than Hades and more demanding with it: two escape routes, a resource economy on the surface, and bosses that punish the sprint-attack habit the first game rewarded.

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.

Individually the easiest execution in the genre and the most reading: strings are simple, but every one of them is a decision about whether the assist you also picked is available.

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.

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.

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.

Single-player is as gentle as you set it; Ultimate Team online is a different game where defending is manual and everyone else has practised it.

The single-player is genuinely welcoming; ranked is a decade of other people’s practice delivered eight frames at a time.

Auto-combos hide a genuinely deep three-character team fighter. The gap between mashing the light button and an assist-extended combo is the entire learning curve.

Reflex mode quietly saves every blown infiltration. Turn it off and the enemy adapts to whatever you did last mission, which is where the game gets interesting.