Sure, but it heightens the host of other problems. Like without wormholes or warp drive, the bad diplomacy system becomes even more noticeable. AI empires will often cut themselves in half and expand in very stupid ways. If you are a player, you will find this trivial to do if they do not do it to themselves intentionally. They won't even really get pissed about it or try to remedy the situation. Its just whatever.

As a player, you then run into the circumstance where nations you want to cross are needlessly hostile and close borders. Its thematic to have a few xenophobes do it, or a few militarists be worried about national security, or the people who should hate you... but that ends up being most of your neighbors. You are then left without recourse to fix this other than war. When crises happen, it often reaches that point of critical mass where it is then impossible to stop. You're screwed.

The mechanics of hyperlanes are also, by far, the most abuse-able by the player against the AI. You can port out at any point in the system, or transit to different systems rapidly. For those who haven't played Stellaris, this means that you can leave a system faster than an enemy can engage you unless they're waiting in the right spot (in which case, you can retreat and then transit again before they catch you). The AI lacks the awareness and strategy to not only build stations with snares to combat this (while a player does), they also do not build them in locations where your fleet can quickly reinforce (on the edges of systems) and hunt them down. When they do build them, they also overtune them to such a degree its economically crippling in the mid game to put a station in every system where as a player will put a platform (the cheapest station) with nothing on it, for little cost and maintenance in every system so that at least they get time to move a fleet there.