I think it's true of Play 1.x but Play 2.x is a different animal. Yes Play 2.x overall is much better than Play 1.x. However Play 2.x threw out all of Play 1.x's developer convenience features that mirrored Rails. A good deal of Play 2.x is choose what you want. That's great for Play veterans, but not so much for new comers to both the Play, Scala, and Java ecosystem. Yes, you have to be somewhat familiar with all three sooner or later.