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Honestly, I'm not seeing them being that great even in an urban, crime oriented game. Not better than say a Bard, Oracle, Ranger, Inquisitor, Rogue/Ninja, Urban Barbarian, or Lore Warden.
What it really looks like is the class(s) is meant for is an NPC, where both having these minor one trick pony abilities would be a little more relevant and the down sides to things like Dual Identity in actual play simply will not apply much.
A lot of talents honestly read like they are designed to either allow ways for the NPC to escape death or give ways to bypasse some of the common system issues that are usually DM Fiated instead (you kick them off the edge of the cliff, but they survive, they are wearing armor but are silent, they do in fact have a bit of spellcasting, or they throatpunch you the last second, preventing that spell from ending the encounter before the DM wants it to), rather than things a player would normally want. Warlock is kind of the main exception.
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Honestly, I'm not seeing them being that great even in an urban, crime oriented game. Not better than say a Bard, Oracle, Ranger, Inquisitor, Rogue/Ninja, Urban Barbarian, or Lore Warden.
That is almost certainly because the bits that will make the vigilante shine in that kind of game are the bits that we haven't seen yet, as they will tie into the social combat and intrigue rules. I believe it was Mark who said there will probably be some universal talents designed for the social persona in the final release that we aren't getting now because they wouldn't mean anything yet. (Can anybody find me a quote on that?)
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Even then, unless the Playtest material goes though an entire overhaul, with the singular exception of the Warlock, I'm having a lot of trouble seeing the Vigilante as anything better than an NPC class, albeit a specialized one. Or rather it basically kind of walks the line between a NPC and a PC class as far as utility, options, and general power level goes outside of an extremely tight niche within a niche of playstyles. But, even then, I have a very hard time finding the class as more appealing than the classes I mentioned above, who all get a great deal of what the Vigilante brings to the table and much more.
So even as a NPC, I don't see a lot of reason for the BBEG to not just take a 1 level dip in Vigilante to get the Dual Identity ability to basically cover the DM Fiat of Emperor Palpatineing it in front of everyone's noses. However, as an NPC class, that means they can have a little bit ore levels to be an appropriate threat than the APL, and a little more GP as well.
For example, the Zealot notably doesn't have an Aura. The Warlock has the option of hiding their spellcasting. A lot of the Talents seem more focused on helping to make NPC encounters work that much better, especially as it's more common to see a single BBEG or underboss than a lot of similarly powerful (to the party) enemies at once. I guess if the point is actually to see how the class plays out as an antagonist rather than as a player, a lot of the design choices we have in the initial playtest make a lot more sense.