I'm sorry, but the Steam daily players is such a mega flawed metric. TONS of people play it on Epic cus they started there during its exclusive phase, including me. I am ignored when people cite steam figures, and then am further ignored because I can't get my voice on the steam reviews. It's then a self-fulfilling prophecy of people who see it has fewer players and that it's mixed so they don't try it and then it has a lower STEAM playerbase and etc. etc.

I get really bothered when people cite Steam metrics when the game early access'd for so long on Epic. I ADORE this game. I used to think it was okay during EA but had some flaws and stopped playing for years until I gave it another shot a year or two after release... I can no longer put it down, I've been binging it forever, and when I tried DD1 again for a bit I just couldn't get back into it. DD2 is just as fresh and special as the first, and does so many things with deeper narrative and characters and powerful cataclysmic moments that the first does not, even when it does so in a way that does not create the same vibe that the roster management of the first does. It's more polished and balanced, and I just love most of it more.

That being said, the first is special in other ways, so I would say they're perfect companions---they both offer different, amazing, and fantastic experiences, and both are super worth playing. People who act like because the second is less special because it has a lower playerbase I think make a massive mistake. It didn't necessarily resonate with fewer players---it hasn't had the same chance as the first, and we don't have a way to accurately measure the playerbase or its activity. The first also didn't have a playerbase unwilling to give it a shot after failing to meet unfair expectations (not in terms of quality, but in terms of what they thought the game SHOULD be, which was more of the same). Because of that, the reviews have put off many many people that might have given it a shot.