Parachute, parafoil, winged landing, whatever...

No rockets, no engines, no fuel, small mass. (Wings of course, are a BIG mass penalty, but perhaps less in the end equation than descent rockets)

Direct descent has mission risk, you only get one attempt. I crashed my share of space shuttles at the JSC public booths, but it's admenable to computer control, or good astronaut-pilots.

The question is, overall, what makes a "better" mission, and to date, an aerodynamic landing wins. You can add icing to the cake with a final phase that uses terminal rockets or whatever, but this is it's own mission risk. If you *NEED* retro rockets to avoid spinal injury on terminal impact, and they misfire, then... tough!

At the end of the day, both options have risk, one has FAR more weight.

Look at Mars Missions - aerobraking has become de rigeur - it saves so much mass and adds to mission payloads. Perhaps you can argue about the last 500m of descent, but that is all...