This argument doesn't work. Period. Plenty of better games in terms of mechanics, story, and actual gameplay have been outsold by games which were not as well-designed or well-written. Quantity, for example, has a quality all it's own, as they say. Look at FO:NV vs FO4 (and I have 80 hours on 4, thanks to mods, and pre-ordered it, like an idiot, so don't be saying it's bias, I genuinely thought it would be good). I can give you further examples all day.
PF:KM succeeded because it's a straight D&D (or specifically PF) simulator. And the market didn't have a single one of even remotely the dubious quality it has.
Both suffered because they were RtwP, I strongly suspect. I think POE1 reminded people that actually they didn't like RtwP all that much.
Speaking in statistical tendency, a popular brand can outdo a better game. Most triple A games are going to beat indie/new devs for their first major game without even trying. Heck a usual sequel to a good game doesn't even have to try to sell well - looking at Mass Effect Andromeda, Dragon Age 2... or across genres, the biannual Call of Duty release.
Generally people will buy more of the same, even if the same can't keep up with expectations. Correct me if I'm wrong, reviews claim PoE1 was well received by the vast majority of players, so it should have helped the sequel.
PF:KM had the odds stacked against it and broke even with the "better game", the how is the thing to explain here. Score, quality, polish, publisher, established brand are all in favor of PoE2. If you want to make the claim that the Pathfinder name and 3.5 rules put the "lesser" game on par with the "better" game that's perfectly alright as your opinion, but can you find anything to back it up with numbers?
Haven't been able to find indicators other than your opinion on PoE1 being a surprise success and people figuring out "well I actually hate CRPGs and don't want something like this again", if that was the case PF:KM should have sufferd as well.
If you took the combat system and graphics from PoE2 and ran it in the PF:KM story I'm pretty sure I'd like that game better than either of the existing ones. We'll see what happens either way when the second Pathfinder game is released.
Do people really bounce off CRPGs or were there some uncanny design flaws in PoE2?
You can play either game turn based at the moment. None of them had the feature at release (and PF:KM only has it as toggle with a Mod). PoE2 ran adds for the release of the new feature, so if turn based was a major problem, PoE2 should have had less of a problem overall by now.
I took the time to check a couple of the original reviews. The uncanny component seems to be fairly noticeable. PoE2 reviews generally have a format like "this is a good game, BUT it has issues", while PF:KM reviews look inversed "this is a flawed game and it needs a lot of work, BUT I love it anyway".
Some squad-combat games, including XCOM1/2 use option 4. I agree with your thoughts re: 1-3, but my experience with 4 is not hugely positive. As you say, it means setting up combos works really well, but equally it means things are very bursty, and can be one-sided in boring or frustrating ways. Plus it encourages bad design choices like XCOM1/2 almost-universally-loathed "pod" system to attempt to mitigate this. Gears Tactics does a better job with the same system, but the way it operates wouldn't work for an RPG. If you just applied it to 5E, well, just look at any combat where the PCs or the monsters all got higher initiative than the other. They tend to go pretty badly for whoever didn't get to go first. You can mitigate this by starting sides far enough apart, but even then it's very easy for someone to get focused and dropped once the two sides meet, and that doesn't really work well for a CRPG, where some fights will narratively need to start at close quarters.
Certainly it's better than DOS' way of doing it, which always felt brutally unfair, but that's not saying much. Even XCOM Chimera takes approach 3, I note. Sure, it's an experiment, but it's clearly something the XCOM team thought might work better (it does, imho).
Some of your opinions are really wild man. People loathe the pod system? Reference on that? As someone who loves playing XCOM for the tactical gameplay pods are great. Sure sometimes you squadwipe your A team and have to restart a 100 hour Ironman campaign, almost exclusively because you got greedy or screwed up though. Pods aren't the most realistic mechanic and they'd definitely feel out of place in a 5E DnD game though.
A lot depends on design. Firaxis XCOM1&2 (+respective Long Wars) are built around the assumption that you are always* (with very random screw ups, something like <0.33/mission and consumables like Rockets or Ghost Grenades to deal with that) to play around getting a full turn 1, with your ability to tank hits being a fairly limited resource to mitigate RNG (and you're still expected to lose people).
5E assumes, you trade a lot of blows and those blows are expected to hit fairly ofthen, rather than have things controlled 90% of the time and 1-30% hitchances when you allow stuff to shoot at you.
The formula for XCOM is kills/CC>durability. Pretty noticeable in the design with how lethal the game can be and the arms race to be able to survive a hit or even a crit with just an injury. Giving the other team a chance to react, or the option to get a full alpha strike before you can react breaks the balance completely.
DnD is a bit less problematic since the damage/durability ratio is less lethal to begin with and you have two more layers in between Death Saves and Resurrection magic. HP, Hitdice and healing are more of a resource and less of a cushion to protect you from looming death in a single hit.
Another big difference in between them is cooldown abilities or being on a timer. XCOM gives you risk vs reward options to play faster for rewards (Meld) or puts you on a timer, either directly (timed missions, bomb disposal) or indirectly (missions crawling with opponents set to patrol towards you, Terror/Haven missions where you have to keep civvies alive). XCOM is pretty rigid on how many encounters you have to deal with with your given resources. Your job is to clear the map and you have 2 rockets, 3 frags, a smoke and a flashbang to do it.
DnD doesn't set a limit like that, urgency is usually a non factor with the "typical" fights lasting 18 seconds till a minute. There's also the reactive aspect of having a Reaction in the mix to do stuff on your opponent's turn and having a choice (unlike i.e. Overwatch in XCOM, where you commit in your turn/out of turn actions just trigger if you want or not).
DnD is an RPG so it's usually up to you how many encounters you beat in between rests. Abilities are either always on or consumable, you either have them up or you're out till the next rest. I'm honestly all for what Larian did in the demo with harder fights and Short Rests after every encounter.
The "hardest" fights in XCOM tend to be telegraphed. A LW1 base is going to have a nasty boss-class pod, a command pod and generally high budget for the other 30+ aliens. You know that and bring the A-Team. The real hardcore fights are when you bring a C Team on a "easy" mission with only 10 opponents and 8 of them are one murder pod of doom (2 Mechtoids, 2 Sectoid Commanders, 4 Outsiders is pretty rad to run into with a training squad). Could be 2 Squads of 6 Drones and 6 Sectoids on the next one. DnD's CR at its worst doesn't swing like that.
Well that went off topic for a bit - point being, if you design the game, the opponent composition etc around group Initiative it works fine, but it's a lot of work and can have brutal results if things go south (if 3 Archers agree it's time to geek the mage). Rolling is potentially worse, since you can end up with any result, including accidental group Initiative. Individual passive Initiative makes for a more predictable Order (i.e. your Ranger can try to alpha strike something) but can still lead to to group Initiative depending on your party comp or simply very fast or very slow and sturdy opponents.
The 5E rules are fairly okay at letting you live through a bad round without catastrophic consequences.
If you start more than 30 ft away you'll have a round to prep for the most common type of opponent, melee combatants. If you have Counterspell you can handle losing Initiative vs a spellcaster. A lot hinges on enemy AI as well. If the AI loves to focus fire, always knows where your guys are and uses AoE CC at every opportunity party based Initiative is gonna be brutal. If they're generally a bit dumb the way AI usually is (occasional pathing fumble, chokepoints, breaking LOF, using buff/utility actions on early turns), it's going to be much more manageable.
BTW have you played Chimera Squad for an extended period? My major gripe with the game is that it doesn't really have decisions. There's an optimal way to set up a breach for your current team and little reason to do anything else than execute exactly that. Your guy comes up and it's pretty much always immediately clear what actions you're going to take.
Regular XCOMs usually have 2 or 3 ways to do things, shots to call in target priority and choices on use of finite resources.
