There are very "pretty" Hugo themes out there, and the setup is usually extremely straightforward.
But in general the UX is great. There's some terminology to learn if you want to get really deep, but it strikes a great balance, imho, between usability and customisability.
Couldn't agree more! If you didn't want a theme you could be up and running in an hour or you could spend a month making your own theme. I wanted something clean and fast to setup and load so I leaned on https://github.com/janraasch/hugo-bearblog
I just recently setup a Hugo blog and hosted it on Netlify in an afternoon, doesn't look as "pretty" but loads much quicker.
Big shout-out to https://github.com/janraasch/hugo-bearblog and https://bearblog.dev/ as they are amazing examples of how to have a blog that is JUST a blog.