Back in the day, for tricky prototypes I'd use single-sided
copper-clad perfboard with the cladding being the ground plane, but on
the component side.

Then I'd lay out my circuit by hand, placing the wiring on the other
side, and making the wiring between components as short as possible.

After that, I'd spot-face through the cladding where I needed wiring
to cross over and, using a soldering iron, melt Vector T44 terminals
into the FR4, (G-10 back then) orienting their turrets to receive
component leads at the right angle.

In the beginning I used to do all of the underwiring first, in order
to spare the components one solder cycle, but after a while the hole
dimensions (or the thermal characteristics of the perfboard got to be
so bad that melting the terminals in wouldn't keep them clinched into
the FR4 after it cooled.

The solution turned out to be soldering the components into the
terminals and using the casual misalignment to keep the terminals from
falling out, then wiring the underside with bus wire per the layout.

The attached photos are of a differential capacitance angle sensor
which was built that way.

--
JF