My first thought on him is that he's faster than CR has ever been while also posessing greater stammina.
And overall, comparing him to CR is not that wrong at all. To me there's basically two winger or wing striker/inverted striker types:
- the smallish, creative, quick, agile tricky types who can also posses a great speed, but don't have to because they don't have to dribble-run into space, but can effectively operate at close quarters (Iniesta, Götze, Ribery)
- the taller, more athletic, speedy types who can also be creative and have great tech. abilities, but also absolutely need space to play effectively (CR, Reus, Bale, Robben ~ lol) and those players also often look like ass when they're not being serviced right because their passing is often only good enough for one-twos and crosses.
It's like a trade-off, those players can rarely be both types combined and if they can (to some extent), then they're mostly used in advanced strikerforward roles.
Overall I'm sure that Bale would be more of an asset to a cohesive team (like Dortmund for instance, hurr durr) because he's a few notches above CR when it comes to defensive work and could also easily work as a WB/FB - which I think he'll become the older he gets.
So if I were a manager I'd decide whom to get based on the team I manage and the tactics I employ.