A game that is heavy on vibes and takes some big swings in presentation on the Alan side of the experience using live action video and full musical number.

Atmosphere is very good. I loved the abandoned New York City of the Dark Place, Coffee World and even just roaming around the woods with different degrees of creepiness.
One criticism, I felt that it was lacking in terror once you see the seems of the monster costume if you will. Enemy generation is actually pretty sparse which appears to be an overcorrection from Remedy's previous games such as Control and the original Alan Wake where they just threw endless waves of enemies. While the scripted events are very good, you're not really dealing with much more than that. Not that I wanted some ammo sponge monster roaming around like Resident Evil but even on the hardest difficulty, I was constantly overprepared for most encounters for the later half of the game.

Also, I have to say - the ending, if you can even call it, that was a cop out. Control fell into the same trap - a middling ending with the promise of more in DLC or a sequel.

I would not have been happy with the bittersweet ending they seem to be angling for but it would've been more palpable than just having Alice show up mid-credits and tell us that Alan is okay and will be back in AW3 felt very trite.