Been grinding through Control for a couple weeks, and finally finished it last night and the two DLCs via a long session that had me up all night. I only had one side mission give me issues where the boss fight at the end would cause the game to crash at a certain point. Upon close observation I figured it was at the point when a certain number of Hiss that spawned were killed by myself or the boss when spewing out more clocks. I solved the problem by speed running it moving to each of the 4 platforms as quickly as possible and tossing the one large clock at each platform at the boss when it was exposed. This way not enough Hiss died to cause a crash.
The game is pretty challenging as many have said, but honestly, I was expecting the main game to have a tougher end game. There IS a bit of a cool extended end game post credits, and the "Ashtray Maze" redeems itself with intricate design for those like me who fruitlessly tried to solve it when the game was trying to tell me it was unsolvable at that point. I guess a big part of my thinking the endgame was a bit lacking in challenge was due to my assumption we would have to fight the person protagonist Jesse is looking for the whole game, her brother Dylan. The first actual encounter with Dylan toward the end also seems to fortify that assumption.
Speaking of redemption, fortunately the two DLCs Foundation and AWE, are everything one could ask for challenge wise, and then some. I played Foundation first, which seems intentional, as if you have both DLC installed, the game automatically starts you on that DLC just after the end of the base game. You tend to learn with these DLCs that using the option to call for a Ranger to accompany you, along with an upgraded Seize skill, are quite useful. After beating Foundation and getting halfway through AWE, I was assuming the former would have the tougher end game, boy was I wrong. I found it was not only more important to call for a Ranger on the final fight of AWE, you also need to keep the boss occupied enough and Seize one, preferably two enemies (especially before the wave you plan to kill him on), to ensure a victory.
This is because the boss in AWE, which is a page taken from Alan Wake 2's The Cult of the Tree's deer antler wearing monsters, is not only hurt by light, he will quickly snuff a couple of the 4 you need to keep operating to have enough energy to do anything. And as well two Hiss enemies spawn each time he does. The weird thing about having your Ranger and two Seized enemies gunning at him as I did though, is I'm pretty sure it's why instead of getting the normal ending of the fight like most I've seen have, where the boss is shown turning bright white and disappearing, the game jumps straight into a cutscene. While the cutscene seemed to indicate victory, the game afterward did not show AWE as a completed mission like it did Foundation.
Another strange thing was after the cutscene, I found myself surrounded by lots of Hiss attacking, including Rangers (Airborne), Sharpened, and a Distorted, plus the 2nd wave of them is harder. I found this fight so difficult there was no way to keep my Ranger alive in the battle area, and there was not adequate cover. I ended up jumping off the ledge you jump down from to start the fight and levitating far enough forward to trigger the fight, then turned around and dashing back onto it. It was still very challenging even from up there, as the Distorted would teleport behind us in the hallway, and several Sharpened would somehow climb onto the ledge, even though they are not an enemy that levitates like the "Elevated" version of them in the base game, and there's no other way to get there without a super jump.
The time I finally beat it, two of the Sharpened were left at the end. I'd damaged them enough to where they were Seizable, as I could barely make out via 3rd person view, but since they were taking cover under the ledge, I could never see them long enough to Seize one. They were also tossing nades, and since I'd died from a nade near the end of the previous attempt with a similar scenario, I wasn't about to make the same mistake again. These guys also seem Kamikaze enough to warrant worrying about them trying to climb up onto the ledge again, even at low health. My well upgraded Charge and Grip pistols were what I used, The Charge when upgraded well has enough splash damage radius to whittle down enemies in cover, but you also have to be VERY careful when in cover yourself not to accidentally hit the edge of the broken steel mesh on the ledge when shooting Ranger Airborne even a ways back from the mesh, as it will do serious damage to you.
I was at first relieved when I retried that post Hartman boss fight battle of AWE, that at least in loading the checkpoint again, the game dialog DID verify Hartman was dead, but boy was I worried I'd have to fight him again. I will likely go back and try the Jukebox challenges, which I tried unsuccessfully several times roughly halfway into the game, as I am now MUCH better equipped. However I've still yet to see any Legendary mods, and I've been reluctant to make any mods as they are only random and of lower tier. There's a lot I don't like about this game, for one, it has the tiered loot feel of Ubi's The Division, which I personally can't stand. It also loves to throw tons of difficult kill these guys or that challenges at you at random points throughout the game, and you often times aren't geared up for them well enough. On the one hand it plays more SP-like than The Division, but I worry with these tactics Remedy will eventually succumb to online play like Ubi did.
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