Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Sekiro’s deflection on a 2D plane. Chip damage means blocking is not a plan, and every boss is a rhythm you learn on frames rather than a health bar you widdle down.

Aggressive rather than punishing — dying costs you almost nothing, so the walls are boss-shaped and the rest is spectacle.

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.

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.

Each boss is a fixed piece of choreography that you learn by dying to its second phase forty consecutive times.

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.

Nothing but boss fights, each a bullet hell and a duel at once. Phases checkpoint until the late ones, which do not.

A parry game wearing a Souls coat: dodging alone will carry you for two hours and then stop working entirely.

Steady, honest pressure plus a map that makes you earn the right to know where you are standing.