Ask for the shape of the challenge.

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

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

Inventory management doing the work of a difficulty setting. Village of Shadows expects the route knowledge of a second playthrough and does not pretend otherwise.

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.

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.

An action game wearing horror, and the resource economy is the horror. Ammunition is the real health bar, and the game quietly adjusts how much of it you find based on how well you are shooting.

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.

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.

Difficulty as an inventory problem: every fight you choose to take is ammunition you will not have for the one you did not see coming.

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.