You can remove flashing and sprue gate attachment points with razor and/or sanding sticks.
AFV kits are not beginner kits and they will take longer as they have more parts and need more work to assemble.
In general, don’t worry as much about the age of a kit as reading reviews and seeing posts of others build of the kit to find possible troublesome areas. Always take with a grain of salt the issues, your kit because of the molding process may or may not have that same issue. Look for thing like make sure step 5 is good otherwise step 25 will not fit well. Ensuring parts have a good prefit is ideal. Small sanding on one or both sides can improve the connection. Sometimes one or two swipes of a medium or light grit sanding stick is all that is needed. Most times a heavy grit is too much especially if not experienced.