This is how Vimperator did link selection back before Firefox Quantum, except Vimperator wasn't restricted to 2 characters for matching. You could keep typing until there was only 1 match, or select a numeric index at any time. None of the post-Quantum alternatives got it right back when I was searching for a replacement (no idea if there's another since then that's figured it out).
Vimium C (https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c) supports link hinting by simply typing a few characters of the link you want to press. It also searches the actual url and alt-text for links without text (such as buttons and icons). I found it by accident looking through its settings and it has by far been the best improvement to my browsing experience since discovering tabs.