I’m kinda torn because of this. I like for good games to get recognition and be successful. Part of me wants to buy the game and give it a shot because it’s been well received and I’m happy to support an indie dev… But I really do not want to help establish a trend of indies sleeping on advertising/spreading word, then crying “woe is me” after a single week when barely anybody was aware of it, as a way of guerilla marketing their game. I also need to watch a bit more gameplay to see if it’s even in my wheelhouse before I decide to spend $20 on it.

Man I Loved the Strike games when I was young, definitely going to be looking out for this one.

That game was way better than a clear product placement game has any business being.

I mean, I loved DOS2 as well, but I definitely think BG3 is the better game. There’s a lot of replayability from the combat in DOS, but the story and characters in BG3 are on a whole different level. DOS2 does definitely rank in my top 5 CRPGs though (BG3, BG2, DOS2, DA:O, and probably NWN would be that full list)

I have a minor conspiracy theory about the Game Pass launch: it almost seems like they made the game pass version intentionally worse/buggier. Still had fun gameplay but lacking features that a lot of people want, some odd oversights (e.g. no menu to quit the game in the PC game pass build, have to alt+F4) and more stability issues. That gives people a chance to try it, find out they like the game, learn it’s better on steam, and then buy it there.
That’s exactly what happened with my entire friend group (we also wanted a Private server for more people and persistent world regardless of who is online, which GP version can’t do currently).
Rationally, I recognize that it’s probably a matter of the build being different, limitations when running in the Microsoft ecosystem (though other games are about to connect to private servers, even if it’s less straightforward) and the GP version is primarily for console (runs on PC as well, but the menu screens feel like console ones). But it certainly didn’t hurt their sales that the Steam version was clearly better.