I've found reclaim to work as expected. I very rarely use it though. In fact, I don't think I've had it fail on me before, but my personal sample size would be small and I'm more likely to take chances on a low~ish quality % than risk losing everything for most crafts.

Mostly these threads crop up from confirmation bias. Many claim to have never seen anything favorable happen when the odds are low, but I think most people just ignore it or feel relief instead of excitement. I've personally managed to meld a fifth piece of materia (7%~ish) on the first try twice. I've had several others that went on for dozens and dozens of materia as well of course, but I do try to take note of all the long odds that turn out in my favor.