Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Depth and darkness rather than combat. It is careful never to tell you where to go, which is either the appeal or the wall depending on the player.

Document checking against a clock, where the rules change every morning and a mistake comes out of the family’s rent.

Nothing in it is hard to do; almost everything in it is hard to find out that you can do.

A build with no points where it matters hits walls it can neither talk nor shoot past. Hardcore mode adds logistics, and the Deathclaws north of Goodsprings teach direction before the game does.

Difficulty as an inventory problem: every fight you choose to take is ammunition you will not have for the one you did not see coming.

The difficulty is logistics — weight, terrain and route planning — with combat as an interruption you are usually allowed to walk around.

The only thing gating progress is knowledge inside your own head, which makes it unspoilable once and unplayable if you look it up.

Every problem has a build that solves it, so the difficulty is whether you think to make one. The Depths are darker and meaner than anything in Breath of the Wild.

The only game here that ships the site’s own thesis as a menu option — combat and puzzle difficulty are two separate settings, and the two are genuinely unrelated demands.

Gentler than the first game and better taught. The co-op campaign is where the difficulty actually lives, because it needs two people to see the same solution at once.