Re: scenery, it really depends what you like. I would say Utah for ATS and Beyond the Baltic Sea or Italia for ETS 2, but that’s because I dig those environments.
The games are patched on a pretty much identical engine so they are on a par as far as technical improvements go, but SCS got better and more detailed at their maps over time, so the older locations in ETS 2 definitely don’t look as good or as detailed as ATS or newer ETS DLC. That said, they are slowly revamping the older locations. They’re working on Germany at the moment.
As for your original question, it’s one of my favourite games and I couldn’t give a shit about real life trucks. The economy and management side is pretty shallow, however, so it’s definitely a podcast/make your own fun kind of game.