Is $35 the best option for people?
The best option is not giving them any money.
The game is fundamentally broken, the development pace is only one issue, the lack of transparency, lack of roadmap, and fundamental issues with the game system make it completely unfeasible to support.
Just to name a few issues:
1. the gacha system is planned "on the fly" with sh*t getting more or less stressful depending on how Helius feels.
2. the recent updates have been a recycling of outfits made AGES ago, we're talking of assets shown to the public in 2021, never released, then suddenly turned into PAID OUTFITS. They're so quickly ported they do not share the same dynamic clothing system the rest of the planned stuff has (i.e. an outfit has multiple removable parts, the recycled 2021 content has either on or off. Also it changes the entire body type as, in some cases, it was supposed to be the body type for an NPC that never happened.
3. the story/combat mode is never coming. The trailer you see on Steam is a lie.
4. the feet system has never been reworked, and it's an issue because in the current state shoes=feet meaning for example Celia has flat workboots as a basic skin = she cannot ever wear heels because the sole of her feet is supposed to be flat and a dynamic shoe system has never been implemented.
5. the entire Steam release in beta is a way to get a release platform while skirting Steam's safety checks. That's why paying for game currency is so complicated, they can't let Steam know they're selling cash inside a beta test release. Which is why I asked people to mass report this.
6. and, again as I said in the past ALL THE PEOPLE WHO CARED, LEFT. Helius fired all the OG moderation staff that ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT THE GAME because he had a power trip on Discord. There's no one left. The new mods are embarassing, when I left the Discord in January the main mod was a guy that basically had just discovered the game in 2024 and was taken on board.
Again, this is coming from someone who HAD THE GAME and removed it from Steam entirely because it's not worth hanging around.
Been a backer since pre-steam launch for the longest time, the level of incompetence got so boring I got tired of even following the Discord. It's sad because the few people who cared about it, like the mods team and Discord staff - were unceremoniously dumped by Helius on a whim last year (edit: actually, 2023, even worse. Basically all of 2024 I followed a zombie project passingly and tried to see how much I could push people away from the game without getting B&'d). Since then, I knew the game was done for. I played it every now and then as long as my benefits as prerelease pledge went, then the moment I saw Helius wanted more money from me I called it quits.
For the record DLSS hasn't been fixed in I think 2 years at this point
I just removed it from my Steam list and left the Discord. Don't waste time on this the development pace and transparency is so abysmal it's just going to be forgotten slowly. Their current step to make a quick buck is to release 3d models made in 2021 as "new outfits" for paid money. It's just a scam.
The game is never going to be made available on Steam because it would mean PH has to be made accountable for their business model. I fully recommend everyone to report the game to Steam as they're exploiting the closed beta function to use Steam as a platform but then use Patreon for currency, avoiding Steam and all its sanity checks in the middle.