Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Everything the 3D games do, minus a camera and plus a pit — the second axis of movement is gone, so a mistimed roll usually means falling somewhere worse.

Heavy attacks with no cancel, instant-death platforming, and guilt fragments that tax you for dying exactly where you were already struggling.

The difficulty is mostly geography — knowing which door to take is worth more than any weapon in the game.

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.

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.

It punishes the instinct to retreat — the only way to get your health back is to keep hitting the thing that took it.

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

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.

The combat is the gentlest in the family and the systems are the cruellest — dying moves you to soul form at half health, and the game never says so.