Reviving this thread because we are having similar issues. The blog post linked above unfortunately leaves out a few crucial steps. Much like the original poster's sentiment, if I'm asked to download third party software to even be able to look at the recovery files then that's kind of a non-starter when there are other, reliable products available.
As to the ArcGIS Pro recovery process, that sounds great but I haven't had much success in experimenting. The referenced blog post makes it seem that you add the table to the map and the features appear. In my case (see below), you're presented a graphic interface. The Feature field contains the spatial information, but it doesn't produce any features. I re-added the table and re-chose each field, still no features draw (and the spatial properties option at the bottom remains grayed out, regardless of field option).
The geometry is clearly present in the feature field (see below). Is there a clean way to render this as a line feature? I am not sure if the 'paths' argument serves as a proxy for breadcrumb timestamps, reading the points in order.
If there are suggestions on a workflow I'd love to hear it. Fortunately another program was run as a backup and the emailed shapefile can take its place for the time being.