Yes, linear regression is often quite good, especially if you have a good sense of what transformations you already need to do to the data to make linear regression work well. I think that many people unfortunately think that advanced techniques will somehow make up for deficient data (either poor quality data or too little data or both). Or worse, they think that advanced techniques will reduce the amount of thinking they have to do. Advanced techniques usually don't do either. Garbage in, garbage out as the saying goes. Simple techniques can often get good answers in much less time.