Release order on first experience is the only way guaranteed to not create unnecessary confusion. Works in a continuity that are released after each other tend rely upon prior knowledge of the work to accentuate the experience. Inventing a new angle to experience them through may be valuable as an artistic exercise, but it is very clearly a bad idea to recommend that angle to newcomers. Release order is specifically reliable because it tracks either the creative process/development of ideas in cases of straightforward serialization, or in case of intentionality in release order follows author intent.
The only time a bespoke work order is even debatable is in cases of an adaptation of a work that is not adapted in release order of the original work. Even then, that adaptation may work around that in a way where it makes it, too, confusing to experience outside of its own release order.

Isn’t it just a third of Pathology 1?
It would be more accurate to say its based on one of the three storylines from Pathologic. Its very much its own game like 2 was before it.