Well, a couple of days solid play on (there was a reason why I haven't been online for days, anyone care to guess?!) and my opinion of it has kinda gone down, then crept up again. Went through the fecking professional championship to unlock all stages and expert level, won 10/14 event in my Skoda Fabia. Often winning every single stage. Why the hell do they make you play through before unlocking expert, my Grandma could win on professional...
Got that done, impressions are that it's been watered down a bit, to be honest. The set up options are extremely limited and the car is magically repaired between legs of the rally. Also too easy, at least on prefessional. Visuals are amazingly detailed, car models generally good but the red cars seems a bit bright somehow...handling is similar to WRC2 but a bit looser, a bit more controllable but still satisfying realistic, the sticky tarmac/magnetic wall glitches are thankfully gone.
Visually there's a bit of tearing on the track surface but nothing remotely worrying, but it's clearly pushing the PS2 bloody hard. Plays nicely, the big change are the stages.
they're alive! WRC had monotonous course design, no scenery to speak of, WRC2 was only a little bit better, this time there are elevation changes, landmarks, you go through villages, quarries, wind farms, past lakes and the like, moving vehicles, waving spectators, the lot. The overally feel is slightly less real-world than it was but I guess that's the way console games are going.
Still, highly reccommended.