I played this game to its entirety with all bosses including the DLC. Overall what a sensational game and I say that with genuine shock as I did NOT expect it to be a game for me even though I am a huge fan of the Souls games. The game was beautiful and the story was engaging even with me skipping dialogues out of habbit. The weapons were awesone and you can see a heavy influence from Bloodborne and some bits from other games such as Sekiro (which I hated) but they also smashed it out the park with their own implementations and ideas and I sort of wish they leant more into their own innovations, but still thoroughly enjoyed. The thing that dropped it from 5 stars to 4 for me as it was a BIG thing was the button inputs being incredibly delayed and breaking the fluency of the gameplay. It made whjat could have been fun bosses really irritating and unenjoyable. Whilst I felt the final boss of the DLC was ridiculously vamped up in difficulty in comparison to the rest of the gameplay, I feel this may not have mattered as much if the mechanics were flawless for fighting... THE MAIN ASPECT OF THE GAME!!! If the combat was perfectly refined I genuinely think this would be one of the best games of all time. Still loved it and highly recommend to souls addicts.

As a massive fan of the OG Alan Wake this instalment felt incredibly strange and lackluster. It felt like it was trying to be something different whilst trying to link to the original game. New mechanics came into play such as unlocking different weapons with script pages and different enemies that were just a bit irritating as opposed to fun. Loved the variation of weapons but didn't like how long it took to get them. You essentially play the same loop over and over until it concludes. Not a fan of the story nor the implemented 'wave' based mode that had a countdown you had to survive. The first 90% of the timer is dull and you're waiting around for enemies and then in the final 10% it just gets ridiculous so was often dying with 10 seconds left which ruined any replayability for me. Gameplay was uninspiring and not fun enough for me to 100% will not go back to this and would love to forget it exists as an Alan Wake instalment.