Cron is a scheduler. If you need other features, your cron script(s) themselves can check those.

Addressing your specific items:

Dependencies. Depending on which of these you're referencing, the package manager (which installs a given cron script), configuration manager, or script itself, can and should test and check these.

Multiple hosts. There are numerous multi-host utilities, ranging from SSH extensions / utilities to full multi-host configuration tools (Ansible, Salt, Chef, cfengine, Puppet, etc.) At heart, this isn't cron's problem. It's a schedular, not an orchestrator.

Error handling. Your script's issue, not crons. Cron is a schedular, not an error handler.

Branching. Not sure what you're referencing, but again, the task of the script, generally.

Sub-minute granularity. Cron is a schedular, not a daemon substitute. If you need a daemon operating at sub-minute granularity, write a daemon.

Reporting. This is the job of your logging facility, generally.

Metrics. This is the job of your accounting facility: systat, syslog, etc., etc.

Pools of jobs. This is the job of your script(s), generally. If you have a set or sequence of tasks, trigger the master with cron, and have it manage the set. Again, cron is a scheduler, not an orchestrator.

Priorities. Nice.

Queue jobs. You want 'at' or 'batch', not cron. Cron is a scheuler, not a job queue.