If you’re interested in 4X games at all Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is only $1.49. It absolutely holds up and to this day probably still has the best story of any 4X game.
It also works great on Steamdeck with a couple of easy tweaks. Unfortunately the instructions for those tweaks are currently in Reddit blackout shutdown limbo so I can’t copy them here, but when the blackout ends you can Find The Instructions Here.
Even though it’s a Soul’s game, there was a hilarious contrast between the Bloodborne subreddit and the Souls subreddits. The Souls subreddits had a lot of non-ironic “git gud” type comments, while the Bloodborne subreddit would just be thrilled that someone was playing their game and even years later posts by newcomers to the game would get really happy responses and the comment section of a newbie’s post that they had defeated the first boss would be a virtual party of congratulations and cheering them on… even when there were many such posts per day.
Probably because it was the smallest community, due to being locked to one system, but it always made me laugh how different the subs were. In fairness the Souls subreddits have chilled out a lot though, but even to this day the Bloodborne subreddit is unrelentingly welcoming in comparison.
I like Nier Automata a lot, but I still think the advice you got was pretty crappy. If you don’t find the world interesting and don’t like the combat then beating the game multiple times is not going to change your mind. That’s like encouraging someone to read a book series they don’t like because you think the ending of book 5 is great.
Geneforge 1 has most of what you’re looking for. I don’t remember if the rest of the series is post-apocalyptic or not, but the first game definitely is.