Brutal? Garbage?
I'm six weeks into AW’s training (from another regional) and my experience is anything but brutal or garbage. In fact, the instructors, new and experienced, have been professional, competent and helpful.

All the classes, requirements, expectations, memory items, etc. have been reasonable. Completion standards would be expected of any pilot who wants to fly the general public for a living. AW has some terminology they use that is more wordy than I think necessary, but it's their sandbox and it's the way they do it.

Starting sims in a couple of days. Just talked with two friends that are in the middle of sims now. No complaints of anything unreasonable, overly difficult. I hope we do get a good number of SE NP approaches to fly by hand. Why would I not want that? Isn't that what the sim is for, training for situations, especially emergency/SE situations?

Not sure what your concern would be about hand flying an approach. You posted in March:

"I handfly whenever possible, whenever I want.When I brief the arrival-approach I'll tell them the ap is coming off at this fix or dme or whatever and as long as you know what you're doing it shouldn't be an issue. Once handflew from little Rock to clt when the FMS and ap failed.Hand flying in green needles.Lots of fun.
You need to do it to stay sharp so when you have to do it you can.”

and

"In my opinion, pilots nowadays are too dependant on automation."