Reddit is removing the Direct Message feature, and all active conversations will be archived so you won’t be able to continue ongoing conversations. Reddit also deleted all bad reviews for their app awhile ago. Its rating went from 3.4 to 4.5 stars overnight.
I am on Boost. It’s a one time purchase for Android Atleast. The dev is same behind Boost for Reddit(now deprecated) and it implements a similar UI as the previous Reddit Client.
Of course, as you said, there are many FOSS solutions as well. I have heard good praise for Voyager and I think Atleast couple of more clients like Jerboa also exist on F-Droid.