How do you manage distributed transactions without some big, complex orchestration system?

So, I'm building this system where a bunch of separate services have to work together on some things, you know, atomically. The thing is, we really want to steer clear of creating a whole new orchestration service, or even using something like AWS Step Functions, because, let's be honest, that just adds more complexity and could end up being a single point of failure. We've even checked out patterns like Saga, but trying to get those implemented and keeping an eye on them across all our services seems pretty tough. What are your go-to strategies or favorite patterns for handling these distributed transactions, especially when you're aiming to keep the services as independent as possible?