If you're notating classical music and want to be able to listen to half decent playback, I would suggest buying NotePerformer and working with MuseScore before buying one of the "fancy" notation packages. Dorico's default playback is worse than Finale's Aria player.
One of the main advantages I find in Dorico is it seamless use of NotePerformer. I like MuseScore 4.4 that came out a few days ago, but it's lack of NotePerformer support makes it extremely difficult to fiddle with to sound balanced. Even if the UI is easier, the playback is most important to me.
Making playback sound pleasant, even with their excellent new integration with sound libraries like Spitfire's, is not easy without tweaking notation.
I hope that the MuseScore team fixes this soon. They have been improving very fast.
