After an initial good first impression of this game, I am now pretty sure this is another failed attempt at making a rugby game.
There is hope if they can make some changes but this is unlikely and we have not seen this from the studio before.
You simply need to play set-pieces and pre-planned moves with your right analogue stick the whole time, its feels like American football.
Player selection for defending is slow and inaccurate. The biggest leak of tries is the poor selection tool and once you have selected a defending player you have limited control over his movement as there seems to be an auto drift towards the player, a type of assisted running, but this feels fake and as if your older brother made you think you are playing while the controller was unplugged. Do you want to cut the attacker with a sharp angle? No, the ai will make your player slowly drift towards the ball carrier. Once you are close all you have to do is press B. The right analogue tackle Is overly time-specific and is way too directional. It's clunky at best.
The passing is broken and you can't swing out to wings for a quick attack everything is purposefully slowed. The passing out of hand takes very long.
The kicking is inconsistent. Sometimes you can't change direction while you are punting other times you can. It does not always kick where it says it's going. If the wind was a factor that would have been ok but tested possible wind effects and if there, are it's inconsistent as for example in some games the ball always gets blown inwards.
Did I mention how slow passing was? even if you manage to get the ball to your wing before being smothered which is very rare, the wing is so under the pump and it's not a viable strategy.
The scrum mini-game remains boring. Lineouts are decent.
The lack of changing gameplay settings is sad, as you have to be happy with what the devs provided. That which they provide is very narrow.
No player transfers between teams or team customization. The career mode has potential but seems cheap, I guess this is what we should expect.
I would have held hope that an update can fix but this will probably come in the form of rugby 23 at another cost to the consumer.