Overcast seems to bug out on me everytime I try to play episodes in the order they were released instead of most recent first.

It also never removes played episodes no matter what my settings.

Seriously these should be simple things.

I had the same issue with it playing episodes in an awkward order because I wanted it to show me the episodes in "most-recent-first" order, but I wanted it to play in the reverse order. I got around it by creating smart playlists - I have some that are each for a single show, and I have a "back catalog" playlist for a group of podcasts where I'm catching up on older episodes, and it interweaves them all together based on their chronological release dates, so that if there's news that each one discusses, they generally get played back-to-back.

I've never had a problem with it not deleting episodes, so I can't help you there.

I have to use it, as it's the only app on the Apple Watch that allows you to stream over LTE/cellular.

I'd love to be able to use Pocket Casts or Overcast.

PodCruncher was definitely worth the $3 or whatever nominal fee I paid.