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I do like the palette by itself, but not as an editor theme. There is so little contrast and it is too bright.

Yes I agree with you. The various tokens all blend together and it's difficult to pick out the differences. They are pleasing colours though. https://imgur.com/a/j6r8iXN

If you configure Nord to have a darker background the colours definitely stand out better. There are quite a few config options to play with.

https://www.nordtheme.com/docs/ports/vim/configuration

I've always been a big Monokai fan. Usually Monokai Night now. I did try out this theme recently and really enjoyed it with the caveat that my @emotion/core CSS template literals weren't being highlighted correctly.

I notice some themes have more robust syntax highlighting out of the box. Is that something I can tweak easily?

Too much blue in the background