Episode 1: Number One Fan
This was my least favorite of the three episodes. It's basically nothing but humor interspersed with some combat encounters. Rose is definitely a fun character though, and her weapon reloading quips are adorable. Matthew Poretta's vocal performance is also very enjoyable as the evil twin brother of The Writer and he gave me several good laughs.

Episode 2: North Star
When the trailer for this DLC dropped, I was stunned to see that we'd be playing as Jesse Faden! Sadly this episode also doesn't really live up to its potential, as it ends up being a sort of parody of Control and not much more. But it's still an improvement over the previous one for several reasons, including its connections to that other game and its much more intriguing Twilight Zone-esque ending. AW2 continues to evolve into a sequel to other Remedy titles beyond AW1 with this episode. Speaking of...

Episode 3: Time Breaker
My boy Tim Breaker finally gets his deserved time in the spotlight. This is easily my favorite episode. It gives us SO MANY juicy lore implications to chew on. There are at least a couple segments that involve no gameplay, yet manage to be incredibly effective at conveying the tone and story. This episode stands significantly higher than the others, and it bumps up my rating by a half star. Honestly, this episode is what I was hoping all of the episodes would be. I also hope we get to see more of Shawn Ashmore in this multiverse.

Leave it to Remedy - or rather, Poison Pill? - to give us so many new threads, clues, and questions about the overall meaning of their body of work. I'm left scratching my head about a few things, but honestly I'm totally okay with that.

I went through a weird phase of loving this game for a short while but then getting really frustrated with several aspects, namely not being properly equipped to deal with heavier enemies and dealing with teammates who make crucial mistakes and ruin a mission's chances of success.

After a few rebalances to enemy design, such as making chargers capable of being one-shot by an EAT or RR shot to the face, and after learning the actual gameplay strategies to deal with more difficult enemies and hordes, I've been having far less frustrating moments with the gameplay itself. I finally feel like I've figured out how to engage with the game in the way the devs intend.

Paradoxically, I've been consistently having a much better time when playing at higher difficulties for random teammates; I now almost always stick to difficulty 7 so I can still get super samples. I guess it's because these players have more experience and knowledge with the game, and are therefore more likely to be better at it. Sure, that random guy who loves to shoot at every enemy patrol group will still join me occasionally, but the mission is still manageable.

One other major reason to love this game that doesn't get mentioned much: it does not demand ALL of your free time. It has daily challenges, sure, but only one per day. The game is so easy to pick up, play for 30-60 minutes, and put down while still feeling like you've gotten a satisfactory gaming session in. Or, if you're able and inclined to do so, you could play for several hours in a row. I'm starting to value this kind of time flexibility more and more as I grow older and my list of life responsibilities increases.

Going to rate this 4 stars for now. It would normally be a 3.5, but the fact that this one of the best live service games we've seen in a very long time, as well as the fact that this game seems to have an extremely bright future ripe with potential, makes me willing to bump that up. Hell, I can easily see this being a 4.5 in the future.
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Update at the 100 hour mark: I haven't been feeling the desire to continue playing for the past few weeks, and I think it's because the game has simply gotten a bit too stale for me. The two main reasons for this are the lack of new things to unlock (aside from the passive ship module upgrades) and the lack of variety in how missions feel to play.

Regarding the first reason, many folks online will say things like, "Wow, I actually play games to have fun, who cares about unlocking new things?" What these people fail to realize is that unlocking new things is part of the fun in a live service game that you're meant to come back to very frequently. If you still have fun playing this, it doesn't matter what I think, but don't try to tell me that I'm wrong for not enjoying it as much as you.

Regarding the second reason, while the mission objectives seem to be quite numerous and diverse in how they are achieved in gameplay, the fact of the matter is that your squad can use basically the same tactics across all mission types (barring niche exceptions like Evacuate High-Value Assets). This leads to the game feeling like the different objectives aren't much more than reskins of the same thing: go to a point, press the stratagem inputs, move on to the next point, repeat, and extract.

I think Deep Rock Galactic is still the perfect example of what this game should be striving for, and it addresses both of these points in excellent ways.

It wears its Aperture Science influences on its sleeve, but this is absolutely a worthy entry in the Portal-like subgenre of puzzle games. The fact that this was developed by a single person is mind-boggling!

My main critique of it is that the core to every puzzle's solution feels very same-y. Once you identify the final step in a certain level's sequence of required actions, everything falls into place easily, for the most part. I still had fun figuring it all out, though; and a few levels rose to the challenge that I would have preferred seeing across more of the game. (I never had to use a walkthrough or look up answers, for the record.)