Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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.

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.

The fastest time-to-kill of any battle royale, which makes positioning worth more than aim and mistakes worth almost nothing else.

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

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

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.

The walls are build checks rather than skill checks. The tutorial helicopter and the first real boss both exist to say that the fight is decided in the garage.

Friendly fire is always on, and the top difficulties are a logistics problem for four people. A good squad wipes to its own airstrike about as often as to the enemy.

Pace notes, no rewind on the harder settings, and a damage model that ends a rally on one bad corner. The hardest driving in the catalogue by a distance.

The gentlest soulslike on the shelf, largely because the AI companion it gives you will happily solo a boss you cannot beat.