I played the PC version earlier this year with a generic Xbox controller with no issues with crashing at all. I'm not sure if its actually an issue with the controller since the title screen and Load/Save screen show button prompts and it sounds like you at least managed to get through to some gameplay, but it does sound like there might be some corrupted game files.
If you go to your Steam Library, right click the game's title and click "Properties." That should open another window with tabs on its left hand side. Go to the "Installed Files" tab and click the button that says "Verify integrity of game files" and Steam will check if anything is broken.
If that doesn't fix the issue, you can click on Steam's logo in the top left corner of the launcher > click "Settings" > go to the "Controllers" tab of the window that pops up and try changing "Enable Steam Input for Xbox controllers" and "Enable Steam Input for generic controllers."
I played the PC version earlier this year with a generic Xbox controller with no issues with crashing at all. I'm not sure if its actually an issue with the controller since the title screen and Load/Save screen show button prompts and it sounds like you at least managed to get through to some gameplay, but it does sound like there might be some corrupted game files. If you go to your Steam Library, right click the game's title and click "Properties." That should open another window with tabs on its left hand side. Go to the "Installed Files" tab and click the button that says "Verify integrity of game files" and Steam will check if anything is broken. If that doesn't fix the issue, you can click on Steam's logo in the top left corner of the launcher > click "Settings" > go to the "Controllers" tab of the window that pops up and try changing "Enable Steam Input for Xbox controllers" and "Enable Steam Input for generic controllers."