Ask for the shape of the challenge.

A simulated ecosystem that has no interest in being fair. Movement takes twenty hours to feel deliberate, the rain cycle takes back anything you did not bank, and nothing is explained at any point.

Every death is your own fault and every run is a fresh cave. The systems interact thoroughly enough that it kills you in ways nobody has written down yet.

Three in-game days on a shrinking map, so the usual answer to a FromSoftware wall — go somewhere else and come back stronger — is the one thing the clock will not sell you.

Every hero is free and every one of them can do something no other game would let a hero do, which is why the learning curve is measured in years rather than hours.

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.

The one that attacks your resources rather than your reflexes — your maximum health falls every time you die, and the ambushes are designed around you not knowing they are there.

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

A bullet hell with a generous dodge roll and completely ungenerous boss patterns. The unlock grind is doing double duty as the difficulty curve.

A hundred and seventy champions, each with four abilities you are expected to know the cooldowns of, and the tutorial covers none of it.

A MOBA played from behind the character, so half your abilities have to be aimed and the other half have to be aimed while something is aiming at you.