Tough, but more than worth it
I'm not going to describe myself as a hardcore rally fan; far from it. I occasionally sit down to watch the highlights of the WRC on a Sunday, but since I hit my teens (and since Sebastian Loeb started to dominate) I've not been as interested in the sport. Still, it interests me more than F1, and V-Rally 3 is a great game for rally fans to get their noses into.
Having played the WRC series, which - early on in particular - had the problems of skittish controls and what felt to be (in WRC II: Extreme, at least) an unbalanced physics engine, I've found V-Rally 3 to be superior in almost every way against the WRC official series. The game's handling can be sluggish, and the difficulty can be, for a newcomer at least, extremely daunting, but it really doesn't matter.
For me, that's how rallying should be. It should be a challenge. If I wanted sharp handling over every surface like it was all tarmac around the High Speed Ring, I'd be playing Gran Turismo 4's circuits. But in a rally game, I expect the surfaces to be near-frictionless. I expect a real challenge, and not another game where the tyres seem to stick miraculously to the track. V-Rally 3 provides that challenge, and it's insanely satisfying when your driving comes through in the end.
The career mode is the game's undoubted highlight, with it being deep and immersive. Whilst it can be completed in two seasons, it's unlikely that it will be. The difficulty is ramped up once you move from the 1.6 litre cars to the 2.0 litre ones. Somehow those cars feel more skittish than the others, and that's just one of the small niggles in the game that do irritate (alongside the occasional graphics glitch and the fact your co-driver is censored from actually swearing at your driving). It will take you a few seasons to complete the mode, and it will feel all the more rewarding for it.
The lack of an arcade mode as in V-Rally 2 is a loss to the game, and it might have benefited from it, but overall the game shows itself to be enjoyable and challenging. It can be irritating and frustrating, but it's a game that's kept me coming back to it for some time and that's saying something.