>>96406421
Yes and no. It actually depends on how autistic and obsessive you are.
It's an endless rabbit hole if you want to be perfect. Its lore content stretches back like 40 years, and the rules for pretty much everything that can possibly happen are adjudicated somewhere.
If you genuinely care about doing things canon and following all of the rules, you pretty much have an endless amount of work to do. Even just learning to memorize the UWPs is going to be a lot more homework than a lot of games ask.
However, if you can recognize that you don't actually need to engage with anything you don't want to engage with, then it is a good beginner game because the most basic rules are not that hard. Roll 2d6+whatever modifier, generally you just need an 8. It can actually be a little too basic in that regard. Everything else, the UWPs, the shipbuilding componenets, calculating mortgage payments, frankly, everything else can be optional.
I recommend starting slow and only really reaching for rules that you need.
As for the setting, I was in a different thread recently where people were complaining about it being generic, or illogical. It's generic when compared to what, I don't know. A hypothetical generic science fiction from the 80s that didn't last into the modern age, which ironically makes it not generic at all anymore because its one of the only surviving examples. And as for logic, there's a lot of people who are too eager to just assume wrong shit about the setting based on a conclusion they jumped to after reading core. It's a very autistic setting, and everything has an autistic explanation. There's even pages upon pages upon pages of lore, explanation, and special equipment for the uplifted dolphins.
It's not generic, and it's very well explained. Almost too well explained.