I also tried to finish PoE 1 and did not manage. My problem was not that the story was dark or gruesome, rather that the world they had created never sucked me in. I don't know why. Perhaps because of the classes or something. I believe that had it been old DnD, I would have felt differently.

Then came the Pathfinder, which I found much better than PoE 1. After that, someone made a turn-based mode for the Pathfinder and now I cannot even think of returning to PoE games.