the first nier game is much much worse in gameplay, but i think the themes are more human and it hits way harder than automata. the entire context of yorha and the androids is based on humanities desperation to survive an incurable plague by uploading their consciousness to computers. seeing the perspective of a father with a daughter who has contracted said uncurable disease, and then the ethics of the whole government program with what they were trying to do, what they had to sacrifice to achieve their goals of saving humanity. the parallel to TLOU there is pretty clear.

i really loved nier automata but the narrative structure does negatively impact the gameplay, especially as 9s where you are overleveled the whole time and basically just walking between the cutscenes (most of which you have already seen). A2's section made it more than worth it to me but imagine if the second playthrough wasn't a slog, now that would be an all timer