I gave in an bought a retail version.*
. . .
*Before anyone P&L, I always said I'd purchase the game again if they removed SeruROM.
I wouldn't P&L about that reason, but the fact that the game was shipped so depressingly unpolished, the sole reason for the delay to build up hype for the next installment in one of the most popular video games in the world, general quality drop when juxtaposed against TS2, etc...
I can't really speak on the comparisons of the launcher, I never ever touched it with my eyepatch'd tryout and my feelings on my using the launcher to install store items can be summed up "shit sux". I don't know if my downloads were borked or if it was just launcher failboating, but some items just utterly failed to install.
I had to uninstall and reinstall the game to get the patch to work in my retail/RLD edition, and this did seem to fix my launcher issues (files that weren't installing would actually install). It could just be voodoo, though.