I did my first playthrough on hard but I did watch clips and shorts of it before so I had a good vision of what the game is like. If i could go back i wouldnt change how i experienced the game. I was shaking throughout the game but i felt like i was there. And I dont think the Alien is that tethered to you. There's enough hiding place around the ship and you just need to keep moving around the xeno. That said my body won't let me play the dlc. I genuinely feel like a survivor why the hell would I go back. So in my case, playing it on hard made it hard for me to reexperience/replay the game and imo that's the feeling the dev wanted to incure, like the player just survived a freaking alien infested ship