Games

Now that you mention it, I remember that I would play it with mouse + controller for some reason (back at 1.0), not sure why I picked that as the best way to play but there was probably something bad about using the keyboard and also something bad about not using a mouse.

Recently? Or early on? The slingshot controls got an accuracy rework and also the option to be aim direction instead of pullback direction if the player prefers.

I think most of the control issues for new players unfamiliar with the genre is how precise you need to be to water crops and stuff. Those of us that have been playing farm sims(not farming simulations, totally different beast once you write both words in full like that, lol) for decades already probably don't even remember a time when it was tough to manually align our tools to the grid. For a lot of people, stardew is their first one, and for a decent subset of them, it's not just their first farming sim, but their first video game on a controller.

There have also been grid aligning innovations in other farming sims for onboarding new players. Some games have a modifier key you can hold down that basically turn the analog into digital movement while holding it. Your character will move exactly one grid space at a time and keep facing the same direction. That sort of thing can help, but honestly, probably better to just make the game fun enough that people are willing to keep playing while they are bad at it, to eventually get good at it. Not every farm sim can accomplish that.