Difficulty: Yes
Progression: No
Finally we have a game that sticks to the D&D rules (mostly). Last one was NWN2 17 years ago. I think we deserve a D&D game every two decades, don't you? 5e isn't about building a character, it's about playing a character. I think it's an amazing improvement to 3.5e (4 doesn't exist, as we all know). If you want complex character building, there's a lot of games and rulesets for it. 5e isn't that, and I'm so so so thankful they did a (mostly) faithful implementation.
Games like pathfinder are so complex that a lot of people just give up creating a character or they fall off the game midway because they just can't be arsed. The completion rate of such games is quite low. This is a much better game for not having complex character building.
