Ask for the shape of the challenge.

There is no block button — parrying is a direction plus an attack, aimed at the incoming blow, and the game tells you this once and then assumes it.

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

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

One hit kills you and one hit kills them, and the retry is instant. Each room is a plan you rehearse at speed, not an endurance test.

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

The world is kinder than Dark Souls and the bosses are considerably meaner — almost all of the difficulty has moved into the fog gates.

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.

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

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.

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.