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Alan Wake 2 difficulty settings and their differences

If you're deciding which Alan Wake 2 difficulty to choose out of the three options available, here's what you can expect from each one.

What are the Alan Wake 2 difficulty differences? There are three difficulty options in Alan Wake 2: story, normal, and hard, depending on how you want to experience the adventure game. Whether you want to relax and enjoy the story side of Alan Wake 2, or lean into tougher combat, here’s what you can expect from each difficult setting.

If you’re going to take on a tougher difficulty, it’s worth knowing all Alan Wake 2 weapon upgrades and where to find the Alan Wake 2 shotgun location and Alan Wake 2 crossbow location. If you however want to focus on the story, here’s what you can expect from the story and normal difficulty.

Here are the Alan Wake 2 difficulty differences:

  • Story – Combat will not pose a challenge, shifting the focus to mystery-solving and exploration.
  • Normal – The combat becomes more of a challenge, forcing players to use items and conserve resources in order to survive.
  • Hard – Significantly challenging combat, leveraging items, and familiarity with game mechanics are essential for survival.

If you just want to focus on solving mysteries and puzzles, Story enemies deal significantly less damage, with player weapons dealing higher damage. As well as making combat easier, finding weapons is recommended but not imperative. Resources are found in abundance, and words of power, weapon upgrades, and charms increase the chance of survival.

Normal mode resembles how the game is intended to be played, and is most tailored and balanced to this difficulty, though that shouldn’t deter you from picking another difficulty that suits you. You need to find additional weapons when exploring, resources are scarce, and using throwables is recommended. Words of power, weapon upgrades, and charms drastically increase the chance of survival.

Finally, the toughest difficulty, Hard, is for the more experienced players as weapons deal slightly less damage and enemies deal significantly more damage. Resources are very scarce, and finding additional weapons and leveraging enemies’ weaknesses is essential to survival, as is using throwables. Words of Power, weapons upgrades, and charms further increase the chance of survival.

Can you change the difficulty in Alan Wake 2?

Yes, you can change the difficulty at any point during your Alan Wake 2 playthrough. Simply pause the game and head into the settings to switch the difficulty.

That’s all you need to know about the Alan Wake 2 difficult differences. Once you’ve chosen the difficulty in Alan Wake 2, here’s what you can expect from Alan Wake 2 new game plus and how long it’ll take to beat this adventure game with our Alan Wake 2 length guide.