Ask for the shape of the challenge.

One hit kills, restarts land in under a second, and momentum is mandatory — stopping to think is usually the thing that kills you.

The demons are a resource puzzle solved at a hundred and twenty beats per minute; stop moving to think and you are already dead.

Parry-first combat with windows tight enough that blocking on reflex fails and blocking on rhythm works.

The EMMI zones are one-hit deaths with a counter window measured in frames, and the bosses expect dodges on reaction rather than pattern.

You can finish it by mashing. The difficulty lives entirely in the gap between finishing it and playing it, and the game is happy to let you ignore that gap forever.

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.

Modern checkpoint generosity on the surface, with a completion layer underneath that wants every box and no deaths across a level built to cause both.

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.

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.

Kinder than the first in every way that matters — the instant-death platforming is gone — and the map is still built to be read rather than followed.