Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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.

Enormous and completely indifferent — most of its walls are optional, and it will never tell you which ones.

Faster than Hollow Knight and less forgiving with it. Enemies crowd, healing is a commitment rather than a pause, and the early bosses assume reflexes the first game spent thirty hours building.

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

Two hits and you are in your underwear, three and the level restarts, and the game expects a second full loop before it will show you an ending.

Slow, heavy and unforgiving — one bullet from someone you never saw ends thirty minutes, and the correct play is usually to not take the fight.

Death drops your gear where you died, and where you died is usually the swamp. The stamina economy keeps fights short and losing them expensive.

Sekiro’s deflection on a 2D plane. Chip damage means blocking is not a plan, and every boss is a rhythm you learn on frames rather than a health bar you widdle down.

Progression is gated behind bosses you are expected to build an arena for, and the game tells you almost none of that. Hardmode is a difficulty setting you trigger permanently, by hand.

It barely tests your hands at all and is one of the most punishing games here anyway: saving takes ten seconds at a fixed terminal and can be interrupted, so every stretch of progress is a bet you are choosing to hold.