It definitely works for sure. But the end result would be the same with the whole essence transfer cloning shenanigans (if he went around collecting spirits).
If anything, I would imagine collecting all of those spirits would make it all the harder to find a suitable host to latch on to. And I find that to be poetic justice really, that in his greed to gain more and more power, Palpatine suddenly found out that he contained so much power that no vessel could contain him without suffering.
In fact, that is the canon answer pretty much. His transfer was imperfect to the clone body, and the body itself couldn’t contain all those spirits.