I stopped Nier Automata midway because it felt completely awful. Then I was sternly motivated by someone to give it a full go and finish it all the way, and it got EVEN WORSE.

Stellar Blade, though, made the gameplay very enjoyable; and its writing, while following a very similar theme, didn’t feel nearly so excessively ultra-grimdark. It kept some core reveals for close to the end (I guess unless you were paying attention to what few audio logs amounted to more than just “They’re coming…! Agh! We’re all dead.”) but I liked the dilemma it posed.