Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Class decides how hard the game is. Insanity turns every squad into a shield, armour and barrier check that punishes the wrong power loadout far more than bad aim.

The build carries the game. A netrunner or a sandevistan trivialises fights that a scattered stat spread makes unwinnable, and the difficulty setting only changes the numbers underneath that.

Rewind, a braking line and drivatar tuning let anyone finish anything. The difficulty is entirely opt-in, and turning the assists off makes it a different game.

Combat that yields immediately to a difficulty slider, wrapped around a preparation system the game quietly assumes you will ignore.

The shooting is forgiving and Dead Eye forgives the rest. The difficulty is deliberate friction — animations you cannot cancel, a horse you have to keep alive, and mission failure for stepping outside the script.

Reversing a trailer into a bay is the skill ceiling and the fatigue timer is the only pressure. Damage costs money rather than progress.

It plays itself for the first ten minutes, then asks whether you were paying attention to what you were building the whole time.

Largos and tarrs will wreck a careless corral overnight, which is as close as this gets to a fail state.

Difficulty is a slider, and the systems are exploitable enough that a determined player can break the game open by hour five. What is left is a very long walk.

Finishing is trivial and winning is not. The item distribution is designed to take the lead off you, so the skill being tested is holding first place rather than reaching it.