It's not a matter of a few extra MB, but number of libraries, more libraries equals more bugs equals more problems.
I'm not saying only play has this problem, almost all java frameworks from the time of play have similar properties.
On the other hand, it is slow, embarrassingly slow (try running it on RPi). For me it's really complicated as well. You have routes file (which is redundant). Templating language forces you to write Scala which then uses a Scala compiler to compile which it is really slow (even Martin said it's slow). It's a vicious circle.
I'm not saying only play has this problem, almost all java frameworks from the time of play have similar properties.
On the other hand, it is slow, embarrassingly slow (try running it on RPi). For me it's really complicated as well. You have routes file (which is redundant). Templating language forces you to write Scala which then uses a Scala compiler to compile which it is really slow (even Martin said it's slow). It's a vicious circle.