Another thing about recursive descent, besides the ability to generate very specific error messages, is that it's a naturally intuitive algorithm which is very similar to how humans mentally parse. Perhaps that's also why context-sensitivity is not a problem at all, since natural languages are AFAIK all context-sensitive.

Parser generators are complex, generate huge amounts of virtually undebuggable code, and require learning another language, yet are less flexible than recursive-descent. It's clear why they've fallen out of favour in comparison to simpler and more flexible parsing algorithms.