Does this game give you the illusion of F2P?

I literally started playing this game 2 days ago, in little more than 48 hours I have half of the cookies, with all the beasts minus Salty boi and I have all of the ancients.

I joined because I read this game was the most F2P gacha and I have a background of 3 years of playing Guardian Tales which if you don't know, it is probably the second most F2P gacha, I quit that game last year for reasons I won't discuss here, just know that CRK and GT share the same model with collections and long term players building up base stats. I was in top Europe in that game for a very long time, completely F2P.

I'm a bit lost right now because by investing into the optimal cookies like Burning Spice, Shadow Milk, Rebel, Pure Vanilla etc. I'm able to clear high difficulty content immediately like Hard Beast Yeast, Expert Beast Raids, Challenge ~27 Abyss of the Four.

I think the game was supposed to let a 48h player only beat the easy stuff but this game is letting me succeed at 70% of the way there in terms of difficulty.

So my question is: what is the disparity between Long Term players, F2P or whales, and a newcomer? Is it the 2 difficulties that I'm missing in Beast Raids? Could you quantify, in terms of years, how much does a new player need to spend to get the remaining 30% of content (which is super hard)?

I stumbled upon this video where the dude said that even after 3 years he was BARELY, after hours of tries, able to beat the most challenging content with insane precision. And he was fuming about the fact that it was a whale only mode where only hyper statted players could compete.

So where is the gap in this game? Where is the illusion, like how many would say "when everyone is super, no one really is".

Is F2P just an illusion? Just because you own everything doesn't mean the game is F2P friendly, if the gap is in upgrades then it really isn't and I'm trying to figure out if thats the case. Like earning 1 pure vanilla is fair, owning 10 to get to ascension is a completely different story.

I just want to know if the gap between one that has a character and one that has that character min maxed is big but not 50 times stronger type of gap.