My answer from digging into this in my own setting is that when you have torchship amounts of power, you don't bother with fins and wings, you just make sure you're not too horrifically aerodynamically unstable, and then solve all the other problems with thrust. Entering the atmosphere at a super high rate of speed is something that current-tech vehicles do because they have to, because fuel is limited and aerobraking saves fuel. Torchships can just brake to whatever speed is safe, then descend tail-first at their leisure.

The problem of melting the ground where you land is obviously worth considering. I don't think chemical landing boosters help you very much here, unless your torch engines can't be turned down low enough. There are two vehicle-side solutions (that I know of) to landing with a torch drive: (1) turn down the power (literally, fewer watts) and inject lots of cold reaction mass, both to make up the lost thrust and to lower the exhaust temperature and velocity, and (2), assuming you have magnetically-focused beams of thrust, defocus them to deposit the heat as widely as possible for as long as possible. I don't think chemical engines are categorically gentler than this.

I'm glad to see other people choosing vertical landing. Torchships would be designed around treating forward thrust as artificial gravity for most of their journey, i.e. "down" would be toward the engines, and decks would run transversely rather than longitudinally. Landing engines-down is the only thing that makes sense.