Ah yes the docs are shit.

I've spent more time than enough trying to find what package functionality moved to

I can't say I have had issues when following the instructions on the MS site, but I did go down a rabbit hole trying to work with the Entity Framework tools, ultimately finding that they were not supported by the LTS release. There are a lot of outdated tutorials out there. Many of the new ones still don't acknowledge a DotNet Core version so it's something of a crapshoot. Libraries are often incompatible with the version you installed.

You absolutely can build something complete using the framework. You just have to put in work to resolve these issues.

Microsoft has come across as uncommitted for many years now. Their guidance has been a recipe for pain. The path to success on their platform is to stick to the mainline.