Precision unit selection and micromanagement on console with controller is insanely difficult in this game.
Specifically and most importantly, the absolutely vital feature of being able to select a subset of units based on type (ALL UNITS > cycle through units) feels very cumbersome and lacks the choppy sureness of the original Halo Wars.
It’s often necessary in the heat of battle to select all of one kind of unit and advance them, or to retreat them to behind the cover of another kind of unit, in line with the scissors-paper-rock gameplay style, but the ability to do this effectively and in good time enough to have an effect seems constantly hampered by some kind of slight input lag between each click of the right trigger while cycling, making selecting what you actually want a frustrating, time consuming mess.
Double-clicking a particular unit type as an alternative isn’t anywhere as reliable, either. Units move on their own on screen, especially during battle, making them difficult to select and so that targeting any individual one with the reticule (and to hope for it to be the right one) and then double-clicking it to select all of the visible ones of that type, basically requires luck. If you have a mix of air units flying over your ground forces, you will be selecting those air units instead from now on. And Eris help you if you if your units of a particular type are dispersed in multiple places off-screen, in that case you’re in for the almost impossible task of issuing an all units move/attack order and more or less hoping for the best.
Worse pain awaits you still if you try to use the circle radius for selection. It is way faster but offers very little in being able to make decisive selections from clusters of forces. You always tend to swipe over too many or too few.
As far as competitive gameplay goes: slick and accurate and powerful controls are a definite must and, on console at least, the lack of refined controls seriously let this game down. It’s a constant ALL UNITS festival, involving massed clusters of forces self-managing combat with no real direction you can offer to your forces.
I’m pretty sure the easiest win is for the cycling to be tightened up so it can be used extremely quickly and reflexively (as is often necessary). Spending even two seconds doing this is far too long, and so fixing it to be butter-y smooth would, at minimum, good enough. The game is good, it’s just that even basic micromanagement is often too difficult, or impossible, and so that places any real attempts at bringing skill or strategy in to combat as totally out of the question.
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One final thing: I can’t think of a single reason why the classic Halo Wars 1 controls weren’t available as a mapping configuration for this game… Personally, I’ve been playing Halo Wars 1 since launch, and so I automatically go to Left Bumper for ALL UNITS. I’m sure a huge portion of people who would have been in to this game were somewhat as experienced in the first game, and so would be much better suited to that mapping configuration.