I would strongly disagree. If anything, it's the other way around - a typical 90s game had a fairly steep learning curve. Often no tutorials whatsoever, difficulty could be pretty high from the get go, players were expected to essentially learn through trial and error and failing a lot. Getting familiar enough with the game mechanics to stop losing all the time would often take a while, and could be frustrating while it lasted.

These days, AAA games are optimized for "reduced friction", which in practice usually means dumbing down the mechanics and the overall gameplay to remove everything that might annoy or frustrate the player. I was playing Avowed recently and the sheer amount of convenience features (e.g. the entire rest / fast travel system) was boggling.