Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Every pixel is simulated, so every run is one wand mistake away from killing you instantly. Wand editing is a programming language the game never teaches.

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.

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 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.

Enemies act during your recovery frames and refuse to wait their turn. The famous difficulty is the ordinary encounters, not the bosses.

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

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.

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.

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.