I learned in this order: C, "C++" (very C-like, just enough to write arduino stuff), rust, and the "real" C++14.

Unless you write C++ like C with classes, which is not really writing C++ at all, Rust is actually simpler, easier to learn on your own, more consistent, with better compiler error messages, tooling, documentation, etc.

Your situation - boiling frog analogy - is a very common case but also the only one in which case C++ feels less complicated, simply because it's familiar.

Everything about C++ feels overwhelming, with so many decisions and degrees of freedom at every step, from build system, to lifetime management, mutable state, concurrency, and threading, to libraries, to dependencies, to deployment. It often feels easier, especially for beginners, because there are so many ways to silently do the wrong or suboptimal thing.