Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Nothing fails quickly. A road laid in the first hour becomes unfixable in the twentieth, and that delay is the only real difficulty in it.

A build with no points where it matters hits walls it can neither talk nor shoot past. Hardcore mode adds logistics, and the Deathclaws north of Goodsprings teach direction before the game does.

Classic mode makes every death permanent, and the calendar decides months in advance who will be strong enough to survive. Maddening turns recruitment into its own strategy layer.

Deity is an economy handicap rather than a smarter opponent, so the skill is knowing which of forty systems can be safely ignored this particular game.

Two games at once — a campaign map that decides the war and real-time battles that can still lose it. Army composition answers most questions before the fighting starts.

Poker hands as a scaling problem. The ante climbs faster than a fair deck can, so a run lives or dies on whether the multiplier joker you needed ever appeared in the shop.

The rules are the difficulty. A fight lost on turn one was lost in the inventory screen, and the game is content to let you walk into an encounter five levels early without a word. Honour mode makes one wipe final; Explorer makes almost nothing final.

A city builder where the scarce resource is time and every law you sign is unrepealable. The storm arrives on schedule whether or not the city is ready.

Real-time pressure with an ATB gauge underneath it. Bosses are staggered checklists, and the materia loadout decides whether a fight is a wall or a formality.

No reflexes and no fights — you fail by having rolled badly on the question of who you decided to be twenty hours ago.