Yea, I agree. I'm at the

spoiler

carnival section

right now and I agree with all that you've said. Atmosphere, narrative, the set pieces - they've made something really intriguing. Unfortunately the actual game aspect of it is so damn boring and pointless.

I was hoping for more since I enjoyed Control so much. I know Alan Wake is a different kind of game than that, but my hope was that they could fix my issues with the first Alan Wake. That is not the case. But I still appreciate the story and other things they've done. It kind of reminds me of the first Senua/Hellblade game, but I actually enjoyed the combat in that and the game was like ~5 hours long.