Also, are there any modern recovery tools out there, that promise better reliability?
If Recuva didn’t work, then you’d need to use a professional tool such as Runtime Software’s GetDataBack. They’ve been working on it for over two decades - all the way since 2001, and I’ve used it on a few occasions with good success where TestDisk didn’t work. The catch is that it’s not free, but you can download the trial version first and run it to see if it can recover (preview) your files. And if the results are promising then you can buy the license and recover the files (no need to rerun the scan).