An exceptional AAA survival horror experience chocked full of incredible visuals and presentation and a strong narrative between Saga and Alan. The exact content of the story isn't groundbreaking like most games, but I really enjoyed Remedy's approach and attention to detail such as the meshing of live action scenes with the traditional video game cutscenes and the stellar color grading in scenes. The entirety of Alan's chapters in the Dark Place are downright beautiful and trippy and Saga's chapters, while more grounded and realistic, still manages to evoke a foreboding and off-putting atmosphere; Watery itself giving Silent Hill-esque vibes during the first visit with plumes of fog enveloping the landscape. Remedy's always been great with this and Alan Wake II is yet another achievement and visual marvel coming off the isosteric and terrific presentation in Control. Also happy to report that I enjoyed the gameplay for once in Remedy's games. Who knew injecting the modern Resident Evil juice would absolutely make the gameplay, though it's not perfect.

While the gun play feels tight and varied and the dodge finally feels just right, encounters can get dull or frustrating with Alan and Saga's crazy slow movement speed compared to how aggressive and fast (and slightly bullet-spongy) the enemies are, and the game sure loves to throw so many at you at once. The flashlight feels like a downgrade from AW1 with worse feedback and inconsistency with aiming on enemies, leading to more frustrations with wasting battery charges since there are some puzzles that require light boosting to leave the area. Did you also know that enemies respawn quite a lot and that makes navigation around the areas feel even more insufferable, especially worse because traversal, and even healing, is so god damn slow and compounded more by all the other issues brought up? RE4(R) this game is not in the gameplay department, except Leon's equally slow-ish movement while sprinting and the fudged quick turn in the remake.

Moving from gameplay critiques, I didn't expect to take issue with the bugs in this game since I feel like I have a pretty good tolerance for this stuff. The massive one I faced was having to reload my save a few times after my controls completely stopped working during Saga's 2nd boss fight whenever I get hit by the boss at a random moment. Minor ones like some of the subtitles glitching out, the enemy music and sounds meshing into a few cutscenes, and part of the inventory being bugged out for most of my playthrough even with some items taking up the spots that I cannot select. Maybe a bug too but Saga's key item menu doesn't differentiate and remove the key items that had their one use versus the reusable ones, making her menu a bit annoying. I did not happen upon the worse like some people are reporting with their experience, but I do hope they get ironed out as they do take away from a pretty excellent game and moments meant to showcase its greatness in action.

Before I end this, I want to bring up the Mind Room. Alan's is pretty lackluster outside of using his story board to change the environment and detail of certain scenes, which is pretty fun visually. Saga's feels more involved and fully realized, encouraged and made more fun by engaging with the puzzles and exploration in the environment. Connecting evidence on the file maps and profiling major characters for their thoughts on specific topics never got boring at all.

And one last thing, I do wish the route switch was implemented a little better in the end as its fully optional nature does undercut some momentum leading up to the final act if one side isn't progressed enough, which wasn't signposted at all.

Even with my issues on the gameplay front, Alan Wake II is still pretty great and is an easy recommend to anyone even vaguely interested in it. It feels real fresh and ambitious as a AAA survival horror game, the genre which has been feeling a little stale lately with remakes and re-releases being the most of what's there and popular. I do hope that this game does end up with a physical release somewhere down the road just for preservation and box art appreciation, but the current dilemma isn't too bad since this game seems like it will do well. Way better position than whatever is going on with Silent Hill recently and in the near future.

Edit: lowered the score to 4 stars after playing new game plus