how easy would you say exalted is to pick up and learn?
Despite how much i love it, it would be deceptive of me to say that learning Exalted wasn't a very messy process at first. I was definitely pushed along by how quickly my first character and his campaign became a special interest for me.
The most recent edition (3e) is definitely the best (mechanically and in terms of writing) and everything that's come out for it lately is superb, but unfortunately the core book was written by a different set of devs and is a mess in multiple ways. I think the basic mechanics are pretty simple and easy to get down (you have a set of attribute and ability ratings, you combine an attribute score and an ability score relevant to the action you want to take and roll that many dice against a difficulty rating), but it adds a bunch of moving parts on top of that that can make character creation a slow going process and make it take a while to get used to playing a character if you're new to the system. I'm of the (possibily controversial) opinion that 3e exalted combat is way more fun than combat in DnD, but it's VERY different than DnD combat and also has a lot of moving parts. In short, its a system you really gotta feel out by jumping in and messing around for a while.
It helps to this end that imo it is not as punishing as DnD is to suboptimal builds. Based on the nature of the game you aren't likely to start with a character that does all the cool thinks you'd like that character to do even if you know the system well, and even if you make a character and then realize you want to do something entirely different with them, you can- experience can be spent towards pretty much anything, you aren't slotted onto tracks based on class like you are in DnD. I could start the game playing a bureaucrat with no combat skills and end the game with a character who knows three martial arts to deadly effect, and in fact I have done exactly that.
Exalted is also a game that is easier to pick up if you're the kind of person who loves to dive into setting lore and worldbuilding; though I wouldn't say its necessary to have fun w the game, I feel like that's whats allowed me to get so much out of it over the years. There is a LOT of it, its a much more realized setting than some systems have, with a lot of canonical dramatis personae and a whole bunch of weird little details. Previous editions had so much lore that you could purchase supplements abt shit like the specific military literature of the reigning empire. 3e has toned this back a bit and seeks to reintroduce the setting and lore through a fresh lense that is both rich and inviting to new folks, and since it's still in production it's a great time to get on board if lore is interesting to you but a huge backlog seems daunting. (Also 1e and 2e suffer from the overbearing edginess of Old White Wolf Games and I'm much more interested to see new devs take the stuff I love and excise the stuff I don't love). I'm sorry if that was a bit of a ramble- I didn't mean it to become one!