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I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with Ride 5 given how long it's been since Ride 4 came out. Let's start with a quick overview then dive into some details.
For those of you who have played Ride 4, It's basically Ride 4 with a different selection of bikes and tracks and a career mode that is effectively identical with some absolutely nonsensical rival "stories" tossed in. The visuals are not improved, the bikes handle just like they did before, and the AI is still aggressively bad.
For those of you who haven't played Ride, it's basically a feeble attempt at Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport except turn the cars into motorcycles and make it a full contact sport played by immortals, or at least make the AI operate like it is. That is not to say it doesn't have enjoyable moments for hardcore motorcycle enthusiasts, because it does, but some of the bike/track combinations combined with the suicidal AI are enough to put more than a few game controllers and screens at risk of serious damage.
The good
There is a large variety of tracks and bikes and if you've ridden a decent variety of bikes in real life you will notice they tend to exhibit at least some of the characteristics of their real world counterparts.
This is more of a personal preference, but I find racing in first person view to be much much better than any of the 3rd person cameras and is genuinely fun. You get a better sense of speed and it's a lot easier to get a sense of what's going on under hard braking. You see things get a bit squirrelly and can let off the brake a bit to stabilize. I found it incredibly challenging to notice these sorts of things in 3rd person.
When races are on an appropriate track & layout for the size of bike, things can be really fun. You can have some occasional decent 2 or 3 way battles with the AI once the field has stretched out and you're not being knocked around constantly.
The "meh"
As much as Milestone would like you to believe otherwise, Career mode so far is basically the same as Ride 4. They've shuffled some menus around and called some things by different names but really you have the same formula. There's a bunch of series you have to get through, and the series are restricted by type of bike and performance class. The presentation of each individual series is effectively identical to Ride 4, so changing up the menus of how you navigate to the series really makes no difference.
Bike customization is also exactly the same as Ride 4. You can add 2 upgrade "kits" to both the engine and brakes, switch to racing slicks from stock road tires, and upgrade the exhaust and wheels. All other changes either just unlock tuning options like suspension, or are purely cosmetic. I would love to see something closer to the depth of RiMS, maybe a happy medium between the simplistic customization we have now and the part-by-part customization of RiMS.
The attempt at creating some sort of a story or narrative has also not really added anything of value to the game. It doesn't affect it negatively, but it's cheesy and honestly has no bearing on the game whatsoever.
The bad
The number one issue, as many others mention, is the absolutely atrocious AI. For whatever reason it seems so much worse than in MotoGP 23. For starters, the AI does not seem to care that they are on motorcycles and at risk of bodily harm or death. They will gladly slam into the back of you, send it up the inside and take you out, and just constantly run in to you every chance they get. This is regardless of the "aggressiveness" setting.
The AI is also VERY inconsistent and at the 70% difficulty I've been playing, seems to randomly switch between entirely incompetent/slow, and absolutely godlike. Head to head race against a rival? Win by 5 seconds easily. That same rival on a regular race on a different track? Gaps you by 2 seconds in the first lap alone.
In general it seems like the rules of racing AND physics don't really apply to them. They can cut corners to pass you and basically just ride wherever they want without penalty and they can seemingly brake HARD on stock tires on a superbike with significant lean angle without letting the front end go.
On endurance races, the AI suddenly becomes incomprehensibly stupid. In a 20 minute race the riders that do actually make it to the pits wind up doing so with a couple minutes left. The riders that run out of fuel (5 or 6 of them each race I've done) turn into ghosts and slowly swerve their bikes left and right like they're doing a slow riding skills slalom course.
Outside of the AI, although I'm sure this is made much worse by the AI, some of the combinations of track and bike class in career mode are simply NOT fun. Primarily what I mean by this is large powerful bikes on small, narrow, twisty tracks. Any of the GP-sized tracks are actually reasonably fun even with the AI.
So overall, I wouldn't spend your money on this at full price. Milestone is not in the habit of making groundbreaking improvements to any of their games after release so I would skip it until it's at least 50% off and don't make the mistake I did in ordering the edition with the season pass.