Best way to update/upgrade things in the drupal database
Features seems to be what the community is clustering around, and is well worth a look. You can use update hooks, but it can be complicated for large updates, as you fear. It also dosn't make it easy to reset values to a default. 

Features seems to be much simpler to use. It can't do everything but most core content can be exposed and managed via features. 

Features also has drush hooks. 

drush features-revert myfeature


Will set the system to reflect the content of myfeature. The down side of features is that it is still fairly immature, or more to the point many of the add on modules are immature, so sometimes code is a little buggy.