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Notes -
Oh yes, this is true! (I recall alluding to this difference in a reply I made regarding DeepSeek being uncannily good at classical Chinese poetry -- it's able to identify words that rhymed back in the day, but not in standard Mandarin.) Even in Middle Chinese these often wouldn't be exactly the same, so it would really mostly be a guide rather than an absolute. Nonetheless, they often sound similar enough that it's significantly less effort than if it were completely random, in the same way that Middle English sote is different but kind of similar to sweet (and not at all to mistletoe) in sound.
The way simplification really broke things is by removing many phonetic guides completely, like 廣 to 广. I happen to be more of a fan of the simplification done in 新字体 shinjitai, but even it kind of breaks things sometimes -- 廣 is now 広, for example, which has a misleading phonetic component. (Of course, it matters less in the Japanese case, as 広い is hiroi, and many compound words use ひろ hiro native pronunciation rather than こう kou borrowed (from China) pronunciation.)
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