Lego are fools for not making quality builds for classic themes, lost money. Meanwhile I'm building Rebrickable instructions and cheap (but good quality) BootLego bricks to make the ultimate Wolfpack fort for like half of what Lego would have charged. I needed like 4 replacement bricks (trap door hinge was shit and windows frames had no peg holes for the wooden shutters) but overall I'm not buying official Lego if I have the option of a set I like that's third party.

I dont have pics yet, but I just bought a BootLego Pirate set for $26 on Amazon last week and just finished it yesterday. Quality of bricks was even better than Lego, no injection mold spots and every brick clicked in real good, arguably stronger snap than Lego. Lots of nice metallic parts too. Only draw back was zero prints and a sticker sheet, but the sticker quality was good. It came with a lightbrick that was just a garbage string of LEDs that did nothing for the set, but whatever. Its a super fun playable set that would have been $75 if Lego just for the brand printed on the studs and including 3 minifigures the BootLego didn't. Overall I say if you dont find the soul in modern stuff, buy old sets or build new MOCs or ideas that fit what you want. Or go to third party brands that still fulfill those types of builds. There's no real reason to have brand loyalty beyond liking a thing.