Cost of living is notoriously high here, and is currently exacerbated by inflation, though that's true everywhere. Hopefully your employer is paying you commensurately with cost of living; if not, ask them to.

Renting can be fine, or not. Finding an apartment is painful, but it's very possible to find one you can be happy in long-term. And a nice thing about renting is that if you do end up in a bad spot, you're not locked in there.

Eating is a good thing if you wish to live. I highly recommend it. There are lots of good places here for that.

"critical opinions on the state of NY itself." I don't quite know what you mean by this, but if you're referring to crime, well, crime is up a bit recently, as it is everywhere. But it's not nearly as bad as you've probably heard from the media, which has a vested interest in making crime sound worse than it is, because ratings/sales. This is still a great place to live. It's not perfect for everybody, and maybe you'll find that it's not right for you, which is fine, but literally millions of people happily live here. If you give it a fair shot, rather than starting off with "tell me what sucks about NYC," you might really like it here also.