Obviously their most standing out thing is the feudal knight units. But most civs counter them hard.
Keshiks and camel units straight up counter them. Chinese towers counter them. Civs that loves wood rushes basically counters you with spearmen rush. Even if they don't, a lot of the civs have special units with spears.
Most people will rush spearmen or towers when they see French in loading screen (if their units doesn't counter you already), as they should, and this makes your whole strength pointless. Now, you can back up your knights with archers (which are one of the weakest of the bunch), but then again why spend all those resources on an expensive cavalry unit while you can do the same but way better with English early MAA?
And even if you somehow succeed in your early harrassment, in a team match, others will turn their focus on you. Then it all becomes a matter of whether your teammates are compotent or not because you will be 1v2/3/4 before you even hit castle age.
When your early game gets countered, your late game sucks... French has one of the weakest cavalries for late game. Their whole strength then becomes that you can produce them for 25% cheaper, which is very good but that's about it.
Besides that, you don't have anything else going on for late game. Arbeletiers are good for melee combat but weak against ranged units (and frankly, they don't do much against some targets). Cannons are good but not the best. Your best bet is just mass producing arbelets and knights and hope it works. Also the age up buildings suck at almost every age.
And that's it? There's nothing else that much noteworthy.
Am I missing something? French is obviously considered strong by many people including pros and content creators. But I just don't see the strength. I watched some guides but I felt like they could do a lot better with some other civs. It just feels like a noob stomper.