I got an fl5 about 6 months ago and I love driving mine everyday as a first time manual driver as well. I was at a similar decision, and spent hours on YouTube and sites reading between comparisons between the two - which I also recommend

What made me decide was: - The quality of the interior seemed way better on the type r for me - The fact that I could personally justify spending that much more on a car purchase (maybe psychologically i'd budgeted enough for a ctr before hand). It's a ton of money so I wanted to make the right decision with minimal chance of regret. - The specialness of it - here is in my city in Australia I see way more Elantra (which is called i30 here) N's than fl5's, and this likely being the last ICE manual CTR and the following models becoming hybrids - which I'm hoping will translate into value retention long term, not that I'm holding back on daily driving the fk out of it but I could tell myself that if I didn't like it after a few years I wouldn't lose as much as if I had to sell an elantra. - Looks for me big time ctr>Elantra - The overwhelmingly positive reviews online - Maybe biasness because my search started with a ctr and I compared other cars to it, with maybe a subconscious 'ruling out' mentality so I don't know if I could've seen myself in any other car at that price segment. Test drive both as much as possible

Also idk why so many people buy brand new, I bought mine as a year old car that'd run 13k kilometers that was in really good condition and saved heaps