Ask for the shape of the challenge.

Every problem has a build that solves it, so the difficulty is whether you think to make one. The Depths are darker and meaner than anything in Breath of the Wild.

The only game here that ships the site’s own thesis as a menu option — combat and puzzle difficulty are two separate settings, and the two are genuinely unrelated demands.

The genre’s shape at a fraction of its hostility — and the only one on this shelf that ships with a menu that will hand you a gun and skip the fight.

Cover disintegrates, healing means walking into the fight to collect it, and two optional bosses sit several tiers above everything around them.

Death is frequent, instant and immediately retried, and every puzzle is solvable from what the room shows you. Nothing here is hidden from a patient player.

Five stances that each want a different defensive habit, on a difficulty curve gentle enough that you can reach the end still using the first one.

Two players, one screen, no difficulty setting. The hard part is coordination, and the game restarts you both a second after it goes wrong.

A blockbuster that expects to be finished, with the actual demands parked in optional bosses you can walk past without the story noticing.

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 metroidvania that fights with summoned spirits on cooldowns rather than a weapon, so encounters are about rotation and spacing instead of stamina.