What is the best/easiest way to save a game (or scene) at runtime?

Ok, so Im wondering what is the best/easiest way to save my game (or entire scene) during runtime so it can be loaded later? I know about Player Prefs and that it wouldn't be the best way to save my game because of the amount of data I would have to store, also Player Prefs can be modified easily. Im looking for a more secure way to save data than Player Prefs. Ive looked into using a Binary Formatter and Serialization and that seems like that is going to have to be the way I go but before I spend a lot of time setting up saving via the Binary Formatter/Serialization I want to know is this the best option?

My initial thinking was: "Can't I just save the whole scene as a new scene and open it later using EditorSceneManager.SaveScene and EditorSceneManager.LoadScene ?" I found that I couldn't fully test this method unless I built and ran my game.

So Im asking do I really have to go through every object that has changed in anyway (positions, rotations, bools, list values... ect) during runtime and save what has changed and Serialize the values with a Binary Formatter? Then Load and plug those values back into a new instantiated gameobject when the game loads? Is saving and loading a whole scene a possible option? Any help is appreciated!