Most negative reviews seem to stem from having wrong expectations. If you are looking for a sim, just stick to RBR+RSF or AC Rally. However if you are looking for a more casual rally game, I think it's well worth the money.
It may be a bit janky and rough around the edges at times as the production quality doesn't reach the levels of DiRT series for example, but it didn't really affect my enjoyment and I am having a blast on my Steam Deck.

Physics are fun on a controller, my only complaint is that the collisions are janky, which can be funny at times (It can look more like a Tony Hawk game then a Sébastien Loeb one on occasions) and the frustrations from them can be alleviated if you use the rewind feature when they happen to screw you over, so it's not that big of a deal, even if not ideal.

Career mode is simple, no managing of a team, just do the races and championships, which reminds me of older racing games and personally I love that. You can customize your team livery though, if you wish to do that. The order you do things in is almost completely up to you and you can skip events you don't like. There are some weird modes with running between cones or gates I am not too fond of, that I personally skip. You make money fairly quickly so you can get car in any category you want pretty quickly, with only special sub-variants of the cars (not sure there are differences beyond the livery) being locked behind events.

There is also a separate Loeb mode, where you play through his career and get to listen to Loeb talk you through it as well. As a rally nerd I love it, I just wish there were subtitles instead of English dub. The mode unlocks you some more sub-variants of cars as well.

The variety in cars is great, with some neat uncommon cars. Model and sound quality is a mixed bag, with some cars looking and sounding pretty good, and others like they are from a 2006 game.

Stages tend to be at the longer end and pretty accurate for a more arcade-y rally game, no super wide roads here. My biggest complaint would be that there seem to be a lot of very fast stages with long straight sections, which is a personal preference thing in the end. Visually the environment can look very pretty at times, even if not the most technically impressive, especially at morning/evening. Or super bland at other times. Just like with the car models, visually it's a mixed bag. There's also a few rallycross tracks and modern tarmac Pikes Peak, which is nice to see as frustratingly it's locked away behind unused exclusive license with Polyphony Digital nowadays.

To sum it up, I really enjoy it and it reminds me of simpler racing games from late 90s and 00s which I love. So if you like those, you'll most likely enjoy this one as well.

The car is fast