And maybe it's obvious, but the largest thing that makes water so useful is that on our planet it's usually liquid but has easy to reach boiling and freezing points. Most notably a boiling point that is easily withstood by most metals and trivially reached by most methods of heating. Chemically something like quartz would work just fine, but its heating and boiling point are way too high to be practical. Occasionally we do reach for molten salts like lithium chloride