After having played MotoGP 20 and Ride 4, I decided to give more bike racing games a shot! To that end, I bought Ride 3 and TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 2 on sale, and gave both of them a go.
From the outset, I really liked the Ride 3. I loved the main menu's design, magazine-inspired career menu UI, and most important of all, collecting bunch of random bikes within the game and reading up on their history and specs. That said, I found the AIs a little too uneven for me to enjoy races in this game. I moved between 60% to 110% in the AI difficulty slider, but I just could not nail down the sweet spot. I still like going through career mode events one by one and unlocking more bikes, but I wish it had more consistent AI to play with.
As for the Ride on the Edge 2, I found it a lot harder to get into, but the career mode was much more interesting/intriguing than the checklist-ey progression of Ride 3. Fortunately, I found racing itself a lot more enjoyable also - they just seem to be robotically following the racing line like coin-op racing game AIs, but at least they are consistent. Snaefell Mountain Course in the game is majestic, but at the same time I felt that there aren't much going for this game other than that one circuit. After going through Junior TT and winning the two-lap time trial on Snaefell course, I find it a little difficult to go back to this game.
Out of these two, I personally enjoyed Ride 3 a bit more since I happen to be a connoisseur of collecting random stuff, but I did find the concept of TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 2 a lot more interesting. I don't think either game is going on my personal top 5 racing games list, but I wouldn't mind putting them as my honorable mention.