You might be right. It's been a long time since I set mine up as well, and it's possible I just didn't figure it out. It's also quite possible there have been updates, making both of us right at some point.
navatar
It is a great device though. Requiring a Google account to initially setup the device is one of my two only complaints, the other being the lack of a HDMI 2.1 interface.
I could not get it set up without a Google account unfortunately. Once it's set up, you can log out of Google and never log in again just fine.
My banking app works just fine on GrapheneOS, and it's required no tinkering to get it working the way I want. I can't speak for smart watches unfortunately, but I'd still recommend a Pixel with GrapheneOS if you really care about privacy. If you really don't want to go with GrapheneOS, I'd still recommend Android. Apple may be marketing towards privacy friendly, but Android still has better FOSS options, which is better than blindly trusting Apple.
Didn't see them mentioned yet, but the Civilization games. Which is funny, because I love the 4x strategy game Galactic Civilizations, and many other strategy games like Europa Universalis, Victoria, XCom Total War, and Expeditions. But something about the abstraction and tile system turns me off. I recently tried Old World, and similarly couldn't make it through a single game.