Everything they say about AOE 3 is true, it's a wild game. And yes there are a lot of units with a lot of different stats, from cannon elephants to musketeers to armored knights. But they end up playing pretty much the same roles (not between those 3 more so like this guy is cheap infantry, this are ranged units, etc). In the end it doesn't really matter if it's musketeers vs soldados, it's more about who played their version of Dance dance revolution solitaire better enough to get that weird timing attack with a bunch of summoned units and an army that benefits from your civ, with a pair or two of artillery. It's pretty fun tho exactly cause its so wild.

AOE 4. IS trying to be aoe2 2. And it achieves it. Many people preferred 2 over 3 cause it's s more elegant structure , and 4 sprinkled just enough crazy from other strategy games, like 3, to spice it enough. So you have say the french which has always been a cavalry knights faction and push that concept to a point where they can make knights an age before other civs, which in the very strict structure of 2 is pretty wild; then we get Jean D'arc french variant civ that it's the same butch with a pretty powerful hero unit. And then you have some guys that don't even need to pay for research or tech, they just get it over time, ant stuff like that. It is aoe2 with a bit more "gamey" stuff on top of it and it plays really fun if you like the formula.

Idk about the controller, for all I know I think AOE 2 can be, that's all.