For me the Heisig method was a great help for learning the first few hundred kanji. Knowing those made it way easier to learn to read words containing said kanji, because the meaning of the kanji more often than not helped remembering what the word meant, and, importantly, recognizing the word.
But after a few hundred kanji the system starts to get so complicated, with more and more elaborate and contrived mnemonics, that IMO it isn't worth continuing that approach. But that's fine, at that point you're already on board and can learn the rest from reading real texts.
(The negative of abandoning Heisig after the first few hundred kanji is that you also stop writing kanji at that point.. which adds to my difficulty of hand-writing Japanese)
But after a few hundred kanji the system starts to get so complicated, with more and more elaborate and contrived mnemonics, that IMO it isn't worth continuing that approach. But that's fine, at that point you're already on board and can learn the rest from reading real texts.
(The negative of abandoning Heisig after the first few hundred kanji is that you also stop writing kanji at that point.. which adds to my difficulty of hand-writing Japanese)