First, did the bus make life as easy for the crew as other aircraft might have done?
It depends really, it some cases you might be fighting with some of the stabilities (=flight control degraded law envelope safeguard)
How the crew felt I couldn't comment on. From my own experience the more you know the aircraft the more you are aware of it's particular drawbacks.
I agree with you though stating that many people get more stress out of a situation on the airbus based on the perceived unpredictability of this particular aircraft by some. The design does not help much to improve situational awareness when things start going wrong. But then you have the TK and Thomson 737 stalling on approach...
Mostly it works as advertised but let's say more time could be spent on training complex scenarios so we can learn from recent multiple failure events.