The more I play this game, the more disappointed I get

[Nismo.]

I had tried the game using EA Play, then when the price dropped I bought it hoping my previous play time wouldn't affect my refund eligibility but it did, now I'm stuck with this game and might as well get my money's worth.

Sadly, the more I play this game the more issues I see.

The game feels low quality and lacking polish

This game clearly lacks polish, and so did GRID 2019.
All of the PS3/X360 GRIDs felt solid, the menus and UI were well crafted and easy to understand, the games looked nice without trying too hard with weird effects (maybe GRID 2008 with the yellow filter) and the driving physics was weird but each game had its own special place.

GRID Legends (and 2019) feel like really bad attempts at a reboot.
The games lack the passion the previous games had, the UI is messy and has weird inconsistencies like button descriptors being Capitalized normally or FULL CAPS for no reason, the main menu is confusing and there are 4 big rectangles with either too much or too little text, the tabs feel out of place and their menus all look very different from each other making the UI consistency issue even worse, the online lobby menu feels like a weird pop-up and you can't even see the lobby's settings (upgrades on/off, damage type, etc...), and the list just goes on.
I never had issues with the UI in previous games, they weren't perfect but they were much better at delivering an easy to understand and navigate menu with the majority of things you'd want at a time.

The career mode is still not as good as GRID 2008 or GRID 2

I don't understand why this game has a story mode and a career mode, and I also don't understand why the career mode is so painfully grindy.
The story mode turns Ravenwest into an evil antagonist instead of continuing the ante of them just having really good drivers. In previous GRIDs you WANTED to be part of Ravenwest, in this game you want to despise it for being a bunch of cheaters.

The standard career overstays its welcome BIG TIME, something GRID 2008 and 2 didn't suffer from (GRID Autosport's career is... better not to talk about).
Too many events and way too many laps and rounds for the slower cars too, it's honestly a chore to complete the career for the slower cars because of just how long the events are.
In older games, more rounds and laps were reserved for the faster cars, keeping the time you spend in the events around the same between the slower and faster cars.

The crash and driving physics just doesn't feel complete either

The driving in both Legends and 2019 feels like an unfinished bad rally game. It doesn't feel nice to go fast nor does it doesn't feel nice to go slow, the cars understeer like you're on gravel with a sports car and then oversteer like they're on tracks.
Braking is also somehow terrible. Every time you brake the car just slowly rotates into the direction you're heading, so you have to countersteer the car when braking, even with ABS and proper application of the brakes.

Driving in older GRID games had its own issues, but it at least felt consistent and well designed.
GRID 2008 was all about how fast you could throw the car into the turn and stay within the huge slip angle, GRID 2 was about drifting the car at the right time to reach peak cornering grip, GRID Autosport was a bit more realistic than the others but the cars still had huge amounts of grip and slip angle and it was super intuitive to learn where the limit is and to not go over it.

The crashing physics on the other hand feel super inaccurate and unpolished too.
In older GRIDs, crashing into walls was a very bad idea even with damage turned off.
In GRID Legends wall bashing isn't as punishing anymore, but when it is it feels like the game just glitched out and the crash physics just went crazy.
The cars stutter and shake so unnaturally when you scrape a wall, it doesn't look right and adds to the lack of polish.

The drifting feels super awkward and slow, the cars feel like they lack power and keeping a long drift is nowhere as nice as previous games (maybe excluding GRID 2 because drifting lost very little grip there).
Again, feels unpolished and just terribly designed and since the drift multiplier goes up right as you start a new drift, the best way to drift is to restart a drift mid-turn as frequently as possible.
The drifting is an insult in comparison to older games.

If you can, go play the PS3/X360 GRIDs

I honestly feel like DiRT Rally 1 was Codemasters' last good game, and it already showed signs of things heading into trouble.
Codemasters has only delivered duds recently. DiRT 4 was a mess, DIRT 5 was an insult to the people's intelligence, GRID 2019 feels like a quickly hacked together tech demo and GRID Legends feels like the same tech-demo with a few new hacked in features that just barely passed the mark.
I'm not counting the F1 games here nor DiRT Rally 2 because they're for different audiences, even though those have a LOT of problems too.

GRID Legends at a 50% discount is not a bad purchase, because that's the price I'd pay for this game's quality, but if you have a way to get the older games (not including 2019) please do. They're much higher quality, more involved and fun.
The only thing GRID Legends has is a barely more active online playerbase, newer cars and newer tracks, none of which are worth how not fun and unpolished the experience is.

I don't hate this game, but it isn't as good as the older titles

I don't mind playing this game every now and then, but every time I play it I just have this urge to go back to the older GRIDs to cleanse my palate.
GRID Legends isn't a bad game in itself, but it's only as good as mediocre because of the lack of polish and, honestly, love put into it by the development team.

Just like DIRT 5, this game's going to have a few updates and then it'll be forgotten by the devs and the players because it's just a soulless cash grab that holds the name of a series many held dear before.

[Marlec]

Agreed! Its clunky, its grindy, its boring. It just has nothing going for it.

[mr munkee]

There was no way I was even giving Legends a chance after 2019 and the marketing for Legends. I put 30 hours into Grid 2019 trying to play through the career but it wasn't fun and just felt like a grind doing the same boring ♥♥♥♥ over and over with mediocre physics. TBH the only Grid physics I actually like are from 2008. Autosport is the most comparable to that, but it's still very different. Something about Grid 2008's physics are just really good, it feels like the only game that actually uses similar physics to Dirt 2/3. Dirt 4 is a confusing anomaly, I wouldn't even classify it as a game. I do really like Dirt Rally 1 and 2. I hate what Dirt 5 is as a Dirt game, but I played through it fully and it's an ok arcadey game. It's just confusing what codemasters thought they were doing letting a completely different team make a main Dirt game on a completely different engine than all their racing games have used for like 15 years.

I'm just glad I own all the old Grid and Dirt games on steam, since they're so obsessed with removing old games.

Edit: I just played 2 and Autosport again to test them and I do actually like them, but what keeps me from playing them (especially 2) is that they have some of the most horrible user interfaces in all of existence. It's just cumbersome to get what you want. Codemasters have a weird history of terrible user interfaces that just get worse from game to game for no reason. Grid 2008 and Dirt 1 both have good, fast, and functional menus. After those two it seems like they felt the need to have entirely different and random ass menu structures for each following game. Grid 2 is among the worst in that regard.