The most recent update---a pretty big one---has improved the daunting experience a lot.
A big factor of it being daunting, was that the settings were a mess. There are settings for appearances of the DE littered in different sections of system settings. This has been vastly improved.
The default Breeze theme felt dated before (not in a good way); the new update had also improved on that.
I'd say, that the default of the latest Plasma (5.21) is quite sane, to the point that I just chose Breeze Twilight (an included theme) without customization and had been happy since.
A big factor of it being daunting, was that the settings were a mess. There are settings for appearances of the DE littered in different sections of system settings. This has been vastly improved.
The default Breeze theme felt dated before (not in a good way); the new update had also improved on that.
I'd say, that the default of the latest Plasma (5.21) is quite sane, to the point that I just chose Breeze Twilight (an included theme) without customization and had been happy since.