To be honest, when replacing the alternator on my BIL's neon (96 I'm assuming the same body style as the one you're working on, since the 1st gen was from 95-99), I was thinking wow, this isn't as bad as most of the foreign cars I've worked on. Nowhere near as easy as the alternator on a RWD car, but not bad. That whole bracket that holds the alternator and tensions the belt for it seems over complicated, and it was a pain to figure out how to put it all together because it had been so long since we took it apart, but once we figured it out, it wasn't all that hard to get at. Now, it may be a different setup if the one you are working on is the SOHC, as his was DOHC...
I haven't changed the alternator on my wife's neon (only 130k miles) but the other work I've done on it hasn't been bad. It is a SOHC, but it is a 2nd gen, so a lot of things are different.
Some of the V6 FWD cars I've work on, though, have been a real PIA...