As always, it's a matter of vocabulary. For example, it's a common saying that HoI4 got away from the complexity for the sake of complexity, but that's not true. HoI4 is more similar to EU4 where you have a lot of stuff but there's really only one way to play it. Thus, that lot of stuff is more or less useless, it only adds a layer of noise to make it looking like a deep game.

It's the EU4 corruption slider effect: yes, you have that slider to take care of, but it's really just a matter of touching it a couple of times in your whole playthrough.

Another common saying is that HoI4 is a sandbox, and it's false again. HoI4 is poorly programmed: having the events not properly tagged so that communist USA despise communism is not being a sandbox, it's lazy programming, it's lacking features.

But since HoI4 lacks any deepness or complexity it is more newbie-friendly for sure. It's then up to you whether you want to play a poor game "where at least even me can win", like EU4, or a complex challenging game that requires a lot of efforts.