It's less keeping track of state is hard and more keeping state in a medium that isn't suitable for it (the DOM). The argument of too much state in a single view is nil by what applications are built nowadays (and also expected). Obviously it was already possible without the rise of declarative rendering frameworks but it made it more accessible to the majority of developers and thus raising the bar.
If you do however find the way markup and code is mixed feels distateful, I'd suggest to not look at any templating engine in the last 20 years because that's what most of them already did.
If you’re building a Gmail competitor, by all means, go with React, build your own solution, whatever. If you need to choose the color of a shirt with 3 sizes, perhaps it’s an overkill.
If you do however find the way markup and code is mixed feels distateful, I'd suggest to not look at any templating engine in the last 20 years because that's what most of them already did.