It doesn’t include the Playstore per se, but it does provide an installer for a sandboxed Playstore.

Give Grapheneos a try!

Google Pay and RCS don’t work. Third party launchers shouldn’t be an issue if you don’t give them network access. That’s how I use Nova.

Posting from my Oneplus 9 Pro running LineageOS as a proof we do exist! There are dozens of us. DOZENS!

The problem is vendor support. As soon as a device stop receiving OS and baseband security patches, it becomes potentially insecure.