I've been watching playthroughs because I don't want to purchase the setup for Alyx at the moment for several reasons. My impression matches yours. It seems like a great game, but in watching it, I realized it's basically all the urban City 17 setting of HL2, which was my least favorite setting of the previous HL2 episodes. It reminds me of a very well-done variant of HL2:E1, which I found very intense and claustrophobic. I'm very interested in playing it but maybe less so than if the game involved a wider range of environments. I can't fault Valve for focusing on what they did, but at the moment something more relaxing or casual is more commensurate with my mood.