Fade in Titles - Adobe After Effects

[Boring_Chris]

I'm (bored) trying to re-create the title sequence to Alien using Adobe After Effects (someone on YouTube has done it)

Is this the best app to accomplish this? It seem very fiddly. Also, using the Opacity option to fade the letters in (as recommended by The Internet) seems to leave each layer more washed out than the core video. So you don't get a solid overlay / character...

Can anyone offer any help? Keen to learn about video editing but this seems infuriatingly fiddly!