I personally find them more annoying than just BGA. But conventional wisdom is they are easier since technically you can solder them with a soldering iron and eventually you'll get lucky and remove the last solder bridge without creating a new one.

The trick with BGA parts is to use solder paste and a stencil. Once you try it you will never go back. By the way make sure you read the xilinx documents extremely carefully. Its easy to forget to wire PUDC_B and prevent the thing from ever being programmed. There are lots of little gotchas.

IMO start with QFP, yes. It's not trivial and has a lot of hand work, but critically you can both see & fix your mistakes.