The short answer is Yes and Yes!
Reinhardt was one of our first heroes and he mostly just worked for us right away. In retrospect a lot of that was because of his shield which allows him to have another thing to do other than trying to constantly melee enemies.
Genji originally started as a hero that only had his sword, and he was going to be our second melee hero. We ran into huge problems trying to get him to work in the game like that, which is why we eventually gave him shurikens and made the melee his ultimate instead.