May write a more detailed log about this game later so not really an actual review but FUCK THIS GAME RUINED ME. Everything about it appeals to me on so many different levels and I have not been this grabbed by a story before since Control. Remedy's use of the medium and playing to its strengths when it comes to storytelling is on full display with this game. It's something that simply could not be adapted into another medium without essentially making an entirely different story anyway. I also wanna briefly talk about how the use of lighting in this game is superb and really effective. One of the few games I've played to really get creative with its use of lighting to convey tone/mood and how it actually tries to have different styles of lighting throughout the game in different places with different purposes tied to the use of those styles of lighting. The game's art direction is fantastic and one of the few times where an extreme push for graphical fidelity was also done with artistic intent behind it. The game very much needed the higher fidelity and utilized it effectively. I can't really think of a game with an art direction similar to Alan Wake 2's and I'm so happy that fidelity was used as a tool for achieving their desired art direction instead of a tool for making things feel "realistic". This game is just insanely special to me and truly feels like a passion project Sam Lake always wanted to make as it never felt like the vision he had for the game was compromised. It felt insanely consistent to its themes from start to finish as well as feeling like Sam had told the entire story he wanted to tell with this game (yes there's post launch content however I genuinely feel that could easily be Alan Wake 3 shit instead. The way the game ended is fantastic especially after thinking about the wider implications of the ending and the mid credits scene)

Game still holds up today and has some surprisingly really fun singleplayer content. Mission Mode is pretty cool altho not as interesting as it was in Soul Edge/Soul Blade, but the challenges are at least a lot less annoying than the "execute all critical arts" missions from Soul Edge. Arcade mode runs are also generally short and take around 5-mins ish for each character so do give each one a go. This game has probably made me wanna get super into the whole series and it's shaping up to possibly be my future fav FG series. Definitely give it a go.

The Revelations DLC was pretty interesting and enjoyable to me overall, but it left me desiring more out of it as it felt far too short to really make me appreciate all the new things it has to offer.

Alucard's gameplay is very enjoyable and feels different from Dracula's in the base game. The meter system finally let's go of having entire moves locked to it and instead, they just serve the functions of either increasing your damage more or healing from damaging enemies. Your entire moveset can be used without having to worry too much about your meters. The issue here with this dlc though is that it doesn't have as many combat encounters to really make you feel like you got enough out of your moveset and you can't even unlock every ability on your first run. This would be fine if the game had some sort of challenge or wave mode to make you go deeper into the combat. I genuinely wouldn't have minded the short length of the dlc if it had a bonus mode to go along with it. Boss fights were also not as good as the better bosses of the base game and felt relatively unremarkable to me.

The new areas in this dlc are all set solely in the Castle and I think they're really cool just like the base game's Castle areas visually, however I think a few platforming or puzzle segments could have been handled a lot better than they already have. I enjoyed exploring those areas overall, and it's just those few segments that I didn't really enjoy rather than most of the platforming and puzzles in this dlc.

Storywise, there's not much to it. It really is just cut content from the base game that they had to make repurpose for an Alucard side story set before the main game. The purpose of the plot was to clear up a poorly explained twist/reveal from the base game and to give Alucard more of a presence in the game's story I guess. I wish it could have given at least an epilogue to the entirety of LoS2 with a flashforward of some sort so that the game would have had a better sendoff but oh well.

The dlc is worth playing in my opinion, however it really should have had more to do in it and feels lacking because of it just feeling like playing through two cut areas from the base game with a new character. The cut areas probably would have worked well with the base game itself, but not really in isolation and I think they should have taken advantage of this dlc to make a few new stuff as well to make it feel like a complete product.