ProtoDot

I very agree, and also I think part of that for games is that some genres don't have a lot of like. Non-spoilable elements you can share that aren't covered pretty heavily in fewer words.
For example, ANIMAL WELL is a metroidvania with what I'd describe as minimal-to-no combat elements and a pixel-art graphical style, and a handful of the sort of overarching puzzles you might want a physical notepad for. If someone asked me for tone I'd say "a little spooky I guess?" and then consider showing them the screenshots from the store pages.
In my opinion, "Metroidvania" is pulling a lot of weight here. And I could probably dig in to more about it, but also the idea of describing any of the "metroidvania" items/unlocks the game has is something I definitely wouldn't do because I think the fun of that genre of game is discovering that stuff yourself. I could just say "metroidvania". That scratches an itch for a lotta people. But I'd probably wanna know the person I'm recommending it to if I went that low-description.
Hell, I thought about whether I wanted to mention the puzzles that want a notepad, because discovering that "oh, this is gonna go a lot deeper than I first expected" might be the kind of thing someone wants to discover on their own. I could also call it "adjacent to TUNIC in some ways" if I thought the person in question would get an idea in their head from that.