Need to make an excuse for your donations, do you?
The choice to rewrite a game that late in development is stupid and can only be to milk people for the same content twice.
He should have learned from his mistakes and used that knowledge to make a successor.
Regarding the graphics, I have tested a SummertimeSaga LoRA for Illustrious which makes the exact same type of characters. There are even some for most characters in the game. That's a way to do quick design and fully animated videos. That would be totally ok, because the original source is his own.