Ok so what I'm hearing is that you don't enjoy a core mechanic of the book (the buff auras) and you feel that it hampers the play style that you want to play, which is totally understandable. That being said, I don't think that it makes the army itself bad - it makes them bad at what YOU want them to do. GW has obviously gone a different direction with the fluff to emphasize the "Undivided" side of chaos here. They want you to think of and play these guys as small bands led by an aspiring champion that sometimes group together for a larger battle, thus the emphasis on leaders babysitting units and the interchangeable auras and associated buffs. If you want to play an army of mortals that are devoted to a specific god, I think that's possible with this book but definitely not optimal and I agree with your assessment that you'd be better off porting the units into the book of whatever god you like instead. But here's the thing, with the Mark of Chaos rule GW has made that extremely easy to do!
So I guess in summary, I am pushing back on your assessment a bit because I think that you are basing too much of your opinion on how the book measures up to your idea of what their play-style should be rather than a more objective assessment of what GW provided. The book is not a failure. The book can be competitive and fun. But for those statements to be true you need to approach it with a new lens and build around the mechanics that GW decided to emphasize. Some players are ok with that and some aren't, but those that aren't should recognize that bias rather than saying the book as a product is a failure.