Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Reversing a trailer into a bay is the skill ceiling and the fatigue timer is the only pressure. Damage costs money rather than progress.

Nothing in it is hard to do; almost everything in it is hard to find out that you can do.

Level gating does the work encounter design would: a mercenary four levels above you is unkillable, and the game’s answer is more hours rather than a better plan.

Creature collection with a base-automation layer underneath it. The difficulty sliders are unusually honest about the fact that the grind is the game.

The only real pressure is the clock: every day you spend without a plan is a day the season quietly takes back.

The difficulty is logistics — weight, terrain and route planning — with combat as an interruption you are usually allowed to walk around.

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

Reflex mode quietly saves every blown infiltration. Turn it off and the enemy adapts to whatever you did last mission, which is where the game gets interesting.

Generous dodges and plug-in chips that can automate half the combat, so the demand is low until Very Hard, where one hit ends you and the chip build becomes the game.

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.