Philips Hue Bridge Gen 2

Decided to dive into the Philips Hue ecosystem as they seem to consistently get high praise and my last experience with smart lights was more dumb than smart. However, the initial user experience in trying to set this bridge up fell flat on its face. Setup the Bridge, saw it had two blue lights. Installed the Philips Hue app, it wants to add a bridge. It can't find the bridge, provide the IP address of the bridge, it connects. Prompts that updates are required, I have it perform the bridge updates and wait until all is good and online. App said it can't find the bridge again, enter the IP address, push the button on the bridge. The app says it's connected to the bridge, I hit continue, then the app says it can't find the bridge. What on earth... I repeat these processes multiple times, I reinstall the app, restart the phone, factory reset the bridge, change the network it is a part of. Ok, fine, this process is broken. Next phase I attempt to see if I can set this up using the computer. It seems you can by logging into your Hue account. It prompts to add a bridge, bridge not found it says. I ping the IP of the bridge, it pings fine, I connect to the web page portal of the bridge, fine. I check the web interface again, can't find bridge... Third phase, I try a third party 'app' 'Hue Essentials' from the Microsoft store. That prompts to connect to a bridge, it finds the bridge immediately. It asks to push the button on it, it says bridge connected and it actually stays connected. I checked for updates, it says the bridge is up to date. Can't seem to figure out how to do anything else though, to add the bridge to my account it requires logging into the Hue web portal and so I do so again. Bridge not found it says. Searched through reddit and all the support documentation I can find and I performed every step, then performed every step again to make sure. As simple as this product seems, it is beyond frustrating and exhausted my patience. Decided this ecosystem is not for me so I'm returning this along with the other lights and will have to look into other options.