Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Hazard 5 with four dwarves is a coordination problem. Solo with Bosco is a slower, different game that the hazard tiers do not really account for.

Machines have components you are meant to shoot off with the right element. A player who ignores that fights the same Thunderjaw for ten minutes with the wrong arrows.

Parry windows are strict and stances are rock-paper-scissors against four enemy types. Lethal makes both sides die in two hits and turns duels into reading contests.

Give Me God of War removes the stagger the whole combat loop leans on, and turns the optional Valkyries into the fights people put the controller down over.

Souls-shaped in its checkpoints and parry windows without souls-shaped stakes. Grandmaster punishes the block-heavy habits the lower difficulties let you keep.

Two games glued together, and the management half is where a run is actually lost — a starving flock undoes a perfectly good dungeon.

A simulator with a full wall of assists in front of it, so the same corner can be a formality or a genuine test depending on what you left switched on.

Limb severing means aiming at the right thing rather than the middle of it. Impossible mode allows one save slot and no second chances at all.

A platform fighter with three attack buttons and no movelists to memorise, which makes it the cheapest way to find out whether the genre is for you.

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.