He isn't, but he has a good art style, even if he doesn't update that often you are right the updates are actually good and fleshed out, and he does actually respond to fans.
I think that's the problem: people get too defensive over the word "milking" when it's done to a creator. But he is a milker! What he isn't, like so many creators, is a gritter or overly ambitious/naive. He didn't and won't do two more updates, than just make patreon posts for two years and get a paycheck. He wasn't someone who came in with good intentions but between sloth, overreaching, and a lack of dispiline, put himself in a corner or break his own game so badly it would take a year to self correct.
He is successfully making a quality game, even if he probably is doing it at a damned lesiurable pace. I think for his own sake, because eventually this game is going to come to end and by then he might get bored/burnt out of making games, pick it up a bit or hire more part timers to get the best of both worlds: but he actually is fucking making this game. Unless something terrible happens, it will be finished and people will be playing it for a while.