Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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

A directional parry replaces the roll as the answer to almost everything, and the game is markedly better once it clicks and markedly worse until it does.

Its difficulty is crowd control, not duels: the game throws groups and ranged attackers at you constantly, and the second world doubles the population.

You choose which limb to cut off, which means every fight is a decision about what you want to be wearing afterwards rather than only about surviving it.

The fastest time-to-kill of any battle royale, which makes positioning worth more than aim and mistakes worth almost nothing else.

Every death ages you, and an old master dies in two hits. The run-level economy is what punishes learning a boss the slow way.

The mage hunts turn every boss into a chase across the map, which trades the first game’s clean duels for something closer to attrition.

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.

Slow, heavy and unforgiving — one bullet from someone you never saw ends thirty minutes, and the correct play is usually to not take the fight.

Two hits and you are in your underwear, three and the level restarts, and the game expects a second full loop before it will show you an ending.