I did Episode 2 of Alan Wake today. The screenshot is of the sawmill in the park. My assumptions were right about it ramping up in difficulty on nightmare. I found myself dying a lot more in this episode, and enemies are bullet sponges I feel like. Rusty alone took up about 3 clips of headshots. I think it may have been a lot harder if I didn’t use actual strategy (saving ammo by running away, not always hard pressing the flashlight to aim, and using the flares to chokepoint areas to escape, etc.). Overall though I found the difficulty a fun challenge, especially since I usually play on Normal Mode. I ended up taking a detour and also collecting all the Manuscript pages. I’m hoping to wipe out a good chunk of the Achievements and finally 100%. Something that has evaded me in all my past play throughs.
I recall a lot of AW1 being a fun challenge on Nightmare, but I was also playing it with a bunch of friends and we were chatting and socialising at the same time.
I do recall some enemies and segments feeling artificially hard though.
Good luck and enjoy it.
I’m mostly dreading the furnace section in the first DLC. I struggled with that one the most from what I remember