> (this one is arguably necessary, but they made it complicated, especially if you want to send logs to a centralized remote location or use another utility to view logs)

It is not complicated at all. Recent enough versions of systemd support journal forwarding, but even without it, configuring rsyslog is extremely easy:

1. Install rsyslog

2. Create a file /etc/rsyslog.d/forwarding.conf

    $ActionForwardDefaultTemplate RSYSLOG_ForwardFormat
    *.* @@${your-syslog-server-here}:514

3. Restart rsyslog

4. Profit.