To me "brutal" means the game attracts audience outside of its genre.

Valheim is "brutal" because it looks like viking minecraft to people and then comes realization its a normal action game but with lots of crafting / building.

I think the "brutal" part comes with how is the player expected to learn. Its not a game slowely dripping harder content in controlled manner, which allows learning on the job while not dieing that many of the older audience expects, or die a lot with minimal punishment that very young expect.

Its "brutal" because you are suppesed to die AND learn (like dark souls, which is also brutal!). Just like in more action oriented games. and its "brutal" because the map RNG, where you can have difficulty spikes that are not hand crafted to be >intuitive to notice and solve<.


So while i would not call Val even close to Brutal, that label is helping set the expectations more straight.