I’ve always preferred MacPorts to brew. I think you’ve nailed it, it just feels much more like the Linux package managers I’m used to. Homebrew has definitely won the popularity contest though.
Over time I'm not sure brew is any better now, though. I have unlinked versions of gcc, python, etc., etc. under /usr/local that are there just to handle brew packages that listed them as pinned dependencies. It's nice that brew doesn't expose them to CLI unless I want it to do so, but it's not less complex.
Assuming MacPorts has a good "bottle" type concept of precompiled packages now too (haven't looked for years) it's probably about the same as brew now, just more stable. If they still compile from source every time a la BSD, that would be my main sticking point.