English has (at least) four constructs to talk about the past: "he went", "he was going", "he has gone", and "he used to go". All four mean something clearly different. French meanwhile only has "il allait" and "il est allé" (and, technically "il alla" though nowadays that is basically only used in writing and its meaning is not clearly distinguishable from that of "il est allé").

It's easy to find examples of distinctions made by French that English doesn't make, and vice versa. That doesn't mean that either language, overall, tends to express concepts more precisely than the other.