What are some alternative to soulless videogame franchises?

What I mean is... sometimes people are very loyal to a videogame franchise or a company because they loved a game they released years ago (Silent Hill/Konami with Silent Hill 2, Blizzard/Bethesda with their respective golden eras, some could argue this happens too with Pokémon and Final Fantasy, etc). Ethical/consumer reasons aside to stop supporting certain companies, sometimes some franchises/companies aren't necessarily creating the best examples of games of those specific genres anymore, yet many fans are loyal to them (and a chunk of them also seem to suffer/complain with every new release).

Meanwhile some people that explore less known titles and different niches occasionally pop-up and say stuff like "the last Pokémon games are formulaic and uninspired, there's actually this and that incredible examples of somewhat recent monster collecting games" or "the last FF wasn't actually bad but if you want turn-based RPGs that'll remind you of your old favorite FFs then check Chained Echoes or whatever" or "don't look for something like Silent Hill 2 with Konami, instead I recommend these survival horror games".

So the idea of this thread is for people to recommend alternatives to franchises. Especially if they're standalone instead of other alternative franchises and especially if they're indie (since most of my enjoyment these last few years has been from indies like Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Darkest Dungeon, Celeste, Slay the Spire, Tacoma, Hellblade).