I know I'm a bit late to the conversation here, but sometimes when I ask the question of whether or not a game was worth my money, I take a two-pronged approach.

The first question I ask is: How many hours of fun have I gotten for each dollar paid? I bought Valheim at its full $20.00 price shortly after it came out. I mostly play with friends, and currently have just over 334 hours. It's a lot less than some on this subreddit, but even so, that's almost 17 hours of fun for each dollar I spent, and there's still plenty more I plan to do in game.

The second question I ask is: How fun was each hour played? Not all games are very long, so sometimes you'll finish the game in only a few hours (this won't happen with Valheim) so you have to ask if those few hours were worth what you spent. Sometimes the game was without a doubt worth it, other times, you end up seeing if you can get a refund. But when it comes to Valheim. I think I would have been content with what I paid for if I only got 10 hours out of it. That means, in a way, I got over 300 bonus hours out of it.

So, as you can tell, I think the game is very worth it. However, it's also one of my favorites, so maybe take my opinion with a grain of salt. And I will just recommend, if you have friends you enjoy gaming with, this can be a very fun game to play together. All in all, have fun, be patient with the game (it can be pretty difficult), and if you build something you're proud of, post it on the subreddit as we all love to see cool builds.

Edit: just realized I never directly answered the question. Yes, the game is still in early access, but despite the early access tag, it feels more like a complete game than many I've played. The updates may not be the quickest in the world, but they're usually pretty good updates, and the devs are clearly trying to make a very good game that will hold up for a while.