This is similar to my use case as well. I just cannot watch a video from Youtube itself, the connection would be lost so many times it'd stop trying after 1% or less. The only solution is to painfully and slowly download it to my system, over time, and hope there aren't cases that destroy the 60% you downloaded over the last 2 days.

If nothing happens to replace or reinstate youtube-dl, a lot of people like you and me are simply cut off from video content. This is pretty much terrible.