You may want to revisit. The base tools for package management can be frustrating for someone who is learning them. Fortunately there are some newer tools that are in regular use probably after your last time using FreeBSD. The utility
portmaster is most likely what you're looking for. It is able to control the ports system and package management very very very well. It has no external dependencies (it's actually just a huge shell script).
In addition to portmaster, the base system's package management has been completely rewritten in
pkgng. You will find that it takes many good cues from debian apt.
All of these are command line tools. If you're a GUI type and shy away from command line, BSD's are not for you (yet).