The spec does try and make it simple to build compliant devices for basic features. It's only if you want higher power or bandwidth than the existing USB 2.0 that you need any kind of digital logic.
For instance, a USB-C analog headphone adaptor is just some resistors and the connectors themselves, and a USB A-C cable just requires a single extra resistor so the USB C device knows there is a USB A plug on the other end and not to draw too much current. Unfortunately, dodgy manufacturers got even that wrong, see https://www.extremetech.com/computing/217556-google-engineer...
Simple to build simple devices is the wrong metric. The goal should have been that simple devices would be cheap enough at scale and, critically, the the correct way to build a simple device would be at least as easy as the lazy way that sort of works.
For instance, a USB-C analog headphone adaptor is just some resistors and the connectors themselves, and a USB A-C cable just requires a single extra resistor so the USB C device knows there is a USB A plug on the other end and not to draw too much current. Unfortunately, dodgy manufacturers got even that wrong, see https://www.extremetech.com/computing/217556-google-engineer...