One thing I love about the UAN overarching narrative is that it never loses the horror genre to the fact that the protagonist is becoming more acquainted with the monsters he fights. Even though Nick fights monsters on the regular, you never interact with it, never see it, and Nick has stayed the broken shell of a fearful teenager that he was when the proverbial fecal matter hit the metaphorical fan in the first game. He remains a protagonist that is just trying to survive (when he isn't self-sabotaging) and that makes the series retain it's horror feel where most series would have long since lost it.