I made a decent dent in Crash Bandicoot 3 today. I haven't played any of the original trilogy before, but I wanted to beat one game in the N. Sane trilogy and I read somewhere that Crash 3 is the best one to start with. So far, I'm finding it to be much easier than Crash 1 or 2.
It has its difficulty spikes (mostly with motorcycle and underwater levels), but aside from those, I find it to be much less frustrating than Crash 2 or especially Crash 1. Today alone, I got through about eighteen levels and four boss fights, and now there are only four levels between me and the final boss. (I'm only aiming to beat the game, not 100% complete it - trying to break every single crate, and get through several levels without dying, just sounds frustrating)
...Unfortunately, one of those levels is a motorcycle level. I won the second motorcycle level by the skin of my teeth, and no matter how hard I try for this one, I can never get better than fourth. At least there aren't any more underwater levels left.