The PS2 controller is really pretty terrible, especially for a newbie. Two sets of shoulder buttons with non-intuitive names, stupid clickable analog stick buttons (easy to accidentally press), utterly confusing button symbols, worthless 'select' button, horrible d-pad. Plus it's based on the SNES, so that should give you an idea of how dated it is. Shoving two badly-placed sticks onto a snes pad and adding a second set of shoulder buttons does not make a better controller.
Xbox S is probably the current best, since they put the white/black buttons in a sane place and it's very comfortable. Gamecube was also comfortable, and it's a lot easier to switch from the c-stick to the face buttons, but had flaws (Z button, y/x easily confused, weird dpad)
To be honest, I think controllers as a whole are getting too complex and less intuitive. As games become more complex there is no longer an easy mapping between player actions and game actions - don't even get me started about FPS/RTS - so the Wii is a welcome novelty.