Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Real-time pressure with an ATB gauge underneath it. Bosses are staggered checklists, and the materia loadout decides whether a fight is a wall or a formality.

Inventory management doing the work of a difficulty setting. Village of Shadows expects the route knowledge of a second playthrough and does not pretend otherwise.

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.

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.

Cover disintegrates, healing means walking into the fight to collect it, and two optional bosses sit several tiers above everything around them.

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.

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.

An action game wearing horror, and the resource economy is the horror. Ammunition is the real health bar, and the game quietly adjusts how much of it you find based on how well you are shooting.

Two games glued together, and the management half is where a run is actually lost — a starving flock undoes a perfectly good dungeon.

Limb severing means aiming at the right thing rather than the middle of it. Impossible mode allows one save slot and no second chances at all.