I haven't been able to play this yet because right from the very first menu the game constantly detects directional inputs that don't exist.

I've tried with three different controllers and on two different PCs. The controllers are properly calibrated and work fine in other games. I've also deleted and re-download the game files.

Does anyone know what the problem could be? Given that this happens on two different computers I thought the problem might be widespread.

I found that the cause of this issue is the 3DConnexion background service. The associated hardware device seems to work fine without the service running, so I disabled it in the Startup tab of Task Manager and the phantom input issue is now resolved.

thanks for the tip.