I wouldn't say 1 was cookie cutter. The first BoF game had LOTS of new and innovative additions that RPGs at the time had never seen. But 2 had all of those, and more. I liked the story of 2 better, and 2's Nina is my favorite Nina over the whole series
I didn't really like 3's Nina, and 4's Nina was REALLY bad. 1's Nina was fairly decent, but too typical. I like 3 after 2 cause the dragon system of 3 was amazing. I just loved the transformations some of the other characters could do as well. 4 had a weird dragon system at first, but later on, it became quite good as well (but not as good as 3). 2 had the worst dragon system, but everything else was awesome. 1 had a decent dragon system.