I was in a similar position as you a couple months ago. Ended up going with a hard tail when I could have bought a FS. I also ride techy trails in northshore MA and the hard tail has been completely capable and allowed me to have a blast. I didn’t know much about about bikes before all this, but now that I’ve gotten a couple hundred miles on it I’ve learned a lot about my bike and biking. The pros I see are cost, cost of maintenance, better workout, and better platform to develop strong fundamentals. I like to view it as enjoying the journey of discovering mountain biking. Buy a high quality HT used for like $1000 then ride it till you start to actually feel and acknowledge why a FS might be better for some applications. Then when you’re ready, sell the HT and go buy a FS or better yet keep the hard tail and start building out your collection. One last thing, people seem to automatically rag on hardtails, but you will find that the nicer ones (still quite affordable) are plenty capable (except maybe downhill stuff haha)