Overall a very good game, I won't compare it to DR and DR 2.0 since I barely played these.

Pros:
Excellent handling for 4WD and FWD cars
Lots of variety in the environments
Lots of cars, from the early days of rallying till today. A couple of strange misses though (why no Toyota Corolla?)
Very satisfying sensations after completing a near perfect stage
Graphically OK overall
Excellent sound design

Cons
some collisions are very strange, in the sense that they make the car spin or lock its direction
RWD handling is too sensitive. I know RWD are eager to oversteer IRL but with a controller it's hard to control precisely how much the car is steering. I wish the game would favor fun rather than realism here.
Long distance graphics are very barebone, a lot of clipping happens even when you have plenty of VRAM.
Replay and photo mode could deserve more attention.

And the worst: Stupid regularity stage in Greece. Yeah, you know the one.

Despite its flaws I recommend the game, I didn't spend 100 hours on it without a good reason. I hope updates will bring new environments and some good historic cars.

Dirt Rally 1.0 is the best rally game. Period. Dirt Rally 2 sucked. EA WRC is what DR2 should have been.

As someone who has actually competed in stage rally, I can offer my perspective. Firstly, these are video games which are supposed to by fun. There are no g-forces in video games (to date). There is no accurate depth perception. You can't accurately hear all the sounds of grip/slip and their slight nuances that mean so much. You can't feel the motion and grip of the car. We don't need ultra realistic simulators to train us to drive a rally stage... go spend 5 figures on a car, service vehicle, crew, 10 sets of tires and wheels, etc... and run one amateur level rally if you really want a rally experience and you will become 10x better at driving and understand rally than 1,000 hours playing any sim.

Hardcore sims for circuit racing (ie. Gran Turismo, F1, etc..) are much more tolerable since the surface is constant and the tracks need to be memorized. You need really good graphics in those games to identify landmarks for braking points, turn in, etc... Rally is unpredictable, on the other hand. The surfaces, grip, and stages should offer something new and unexpected constantly. There is no way to simulate that without being frustratingly realistic. What is meant by frustratingly realistic is that in video games you make mistakes with disproportionate consequences. You can't judge how far away something is on a 2D plane (even VR headsets are 2D planes) nor do you have the physical forces on your body to tell you the level of grip, slip, or lateral angles the car and tires are undergoing. With that in mind, running wide in a corner or coming in too hot to a tight turn shouldn't sent your care catapulting into a barrel roll or immediately end your rally (if your aim in the game is to have fun). In real life sure it can, but you have way more data, feedback, and control IRL to keep more control of the car and higher situational awareness/feedback. You don't get these things in video games, yet an ultra-realistic sim would penalize you for misjudging them --disproportionate.

DR1 has the best blend of both aspects --realistic enough to get the feel of rally, but forgiving enough to be a fun video game. EA WRC isn't better than DR1, but it is much better than DR2. Note the DR games are different from the regular "Dirt" games.

Anyways.... If you want another fun video game to fulfill a stage rally experience, get this game. The physics are more forgiving than DR1 which adds to fun, not frustration. DR1 still is more challenging and you can always go play that if you want more of a sim experience and a better overall game. However, you'll soon run out of new courses and cars and want more. That's where DR2 was supposed to come in, except the physics sucked and it was too arcade-y to the point where it was laughable. EA WRC is a better blend of adding fun, novelty, and decent physics, vs. DR2.

The different surfaces, longer stages, new locations, much better co-driving calls/voice, and slightly wider roads with slightly more forgiving physics make for an enjoyable experience. The physics are different, but the major concepts are there: weight (ie. bumps, dips, and crests) affects grip, car balance affects under/oversteer, surfaces affect grip, weather affects everything, and throttle/brake inputs produce predictable results, and the sense of speed. This is enough to feel a bit like real driving at the limit, but without being too frustratingly realistic.

The game is pretty good overall. Once you get good at understanding the physics and limitations of the 'slower' cars, you can run the modern WRC cars for a real challenge where you really do have to drive perfectly to satisfy yourself. You can definitely put a lot of hours into this game and there is quite a lot of challenge that you will desire to keep improving.

The career mode is okay. It's a little weird to need to please your benefactor, but I get it. I just ignored that and kept overspending. The custom car building doesn't have Gran Turismo level depth, but it can be neat to build and tune your car. The online is very fun and the new time trial mode is awesome to just jump in and play something random very quickly. Racing friends in real-time is a great feature! So is racing their ghosts! The new countries and stages are amazingly designed and again, FUN.

Oh, the regularity rallies are trash. Stupidest concept ever in 'racing' and should have been left out of the game... You don't really need to do them though. They are fun in real-life like doing a science experiment in real life can be fun, but that doesn't translate to a video game.

The graphics feel like 2019. They're okay. But I didn't get this game hoping for a cinematic visual feast. I bought this game to have a fun rally-driving video game experience. Besides, at 100mph, you should be focused on the road and not have time to look at all the textures and aliasing flying by you. The road surfaces' textures and detail are not that great which is disappointing, since that's where your eyes will spend most of their time. The sounds are on par with most semi-sim racing games.

Overall I would recommend this game to any rally fan. It's the best one to come out since DR1, which was the best one since Colin McRae Rally 3. It doesn't surpass DR1, but it's a good companion if you get tired of playing that over and over. Graphically, it is subpar by today's standards, but that's okay because the whole point is to enjoy playing it which is rare for a rally game. People still play old games like Counterstrike because they are enjoyable, not for their graphics. I have a feeling people will still be playing this game in 10 years because it is fun, challenging, has a decent multiplayer mode (for a rally game!), and has an overall feel that is what driving a rally car should be like --in a video game setting! There are very few good rally games, and even fewer that are satisfying for rally fanatics. This one can be included in that list.

Not impressed with having to sign-in to an EA Account. Spent a half hour just trying to sign-in and had to give EA information about myself that frankly is none of their business.
Does not recognise my Fanatec CSL DD wheel properly. It "sees" the wheel OK but during some calibrations does not recognise the wheel???????.
Graphics look great, but unhappy with wheel set-up.