Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Aim is only half of it — the generation means the run you get may simply not contain the item you needed, and the game will not tell you that either.

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.

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.

Difficulty is a clock rather than a setting: everything you do to get stronger also makes the timer worse. Monsoon runs end in seconds when they end.

Wirebugs give every weapon a get-out-of-jail move, which makes this the entry that will actually teach you the series rather than survive you learning it.

Sixty hours of systems the game never explains, hiding behind a weapon whose fourth input you have not found yet.

The mage hunts turn every boss into a chase across the map, which trades the first game’s clean duels for something closer to attrition.

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

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.

Short and dense, and almost nothing in it is labelled — you learn what an item does by eating it and finding out.