Some thoughts. I’m only 5 hours in, so I guess this is first impressions.
I spent about an hour of that, configuring the game, the visuals, and the sim racing hardware. Based on the EA SPORTS WRC discord, I thought it a good idea, to spend a good amount of time setting up the game. Moza support needed me to drop an XML file from the Moza discord, into a folder, and a restart. The only thing I couldn’t map was a button box. So, instead, I mapped car controls to a stream deck.
I’ve read and watched videos about the “poor performance” of the game, with stutters. So from the start, I dropped graphics down to high, and turned on DLSS, turned off motion blur, mirrors down to low, crowd low, reflections low. The game engine seems to peg, one CPU core. This leads to a CPU bound game, most of the time. Keep this in mind when you are trying to tweak graphics settings. You can confirm this by checking CPU vs GPU usage/utilisation. If your GPU is under 60%, it’s wait for frames to process, and your CPU can’t keep up. The in-game stutters on a stage, are related to unreal engine 4 doing the shader compilation when you start the stage. Which means, subsequent runs of the same stage, won’t have stutters. Supposedly, this will be fixed in the next week. If you don’t want to deal with these once-off-stutters, wait a week.
Rally school was fine. The bar is very low. Seems aimed at those that know nothing of rally related driving techniques. Career is career. Very similar to Kiloton’s WRC Generations. So, it’s about more than just driving. It’s team management, finance management, repairs, engineer skills, all the stuff I couldn’t care less about. This isn’t a knock. This is a preference. Car builder, seems great, till you notice, that most cars online, look samey. 
Again, I don’t care much for this. Seems nice enough.
But enough about the all this other fluff. How does it drive? The cars handle like the drivetrain layouts, they are. Every car has distinctive feel. The force feedback is excellent, communicative, weighty, and doing all the right things, as you dance your cars over crests, jumps, bumps, harsh road shoulders, through ruts, ditches, and the like. That same moment to moment tiny corrections, that you need to take a corner well, is here too, just like Dirt Rally 2.0. It’s said, smooth is fast. What they don’t tell you is, it’s the car’s line through the corner that needs to be smooth, and to do that, your wheel handling on a dodgy surface, is anything but smooth. To make these corrections, you need good force feedback, good enough to convey what the car is dealing with. And it does that, in spades. The caveat is, spend a good amount of time, testing FFB settings. As it stands, it looks like the default setting, has FFB dialed up to 11/10. So perhaps, if you had good FFB settings in Dirt Rally 2.0, know that they translate fairly well to this game. I just ported my settings over, and it was like coming home. The time you put in here, will most likely determine how much the driving will blow your mind. The thrill of driving without knowing the stage is phenomenal. Gravel and lose surfaces, have a good progressive break away for the tyres. It is what this game is good at. The feeling of throwing a 4WD car hard into the a left, to load up the tyres, so that you can use the added grip and car’s inertia for the follow-up hairpin, is superb. Game on the whole is more grippy than Dirt Rally 2.0. Although, I would describe it more akin to having a planted car, than being on rails. Tarmac is improved. I’d call it it an upgrade over Dirt Rally. You mostly know what’s going on. The way the tyres let go, is more abrupt than gravel. Snow, seems fine too. While I did drive in those conditions, I mean, what does a South African know about snow? It does feel like there’s more grip than gravel. Which tracks about right, considering snow tyres have spikes. Snowbanks I still need to test. I didn’t manage to have a close shave, with the “powdery snowbanks”. So I don’t know if it sucks you in, like Dirt Rally 1 or it’s more forgiving, like Dirt Rally 2.0.
Pace notes have improved. There are more to describe what is coming up. But you can also change the type of notes, to simplify things for yourself, if you want less complicated detail to fry your brain, while trying to control a car trying to murder you. This is way too early, to conclusively say, but so far, the pace notes haven’t had any glaring errors.
Camera options seem about the same, though FOV seems a tad more detailed. I think I also saw some more mappable controls for for camera related things, than the bare minimum. You can definitely find camera configuration with the options available, that work for you. They still don’t have lock to horizon though.
I was going to do all the career stuff, until I found the clubs again. This time around though, we have the website analysis tool to elevate your community club experience to levels, no other rally game can match. You can rewatch your run from a club, against a competitor, and even switch camera angles 
YOU CAN WATCH SOMEONE IN COCKPIT VIEW!! 
I chatted for a solid half hour with someone about a run last night. Also, all the sector split times are available this time, in the leaderboards, so the stats nerds can deep dive. Heck, you can even export the csv file.
The tuning menu’s seem similar, just ported from Dirt Rally 2.0, to the new game’s UI. The same things I change in the old game, seem to have a similar effect, in the new game. :shrug: Speaking of UI. I’m not a fan. The menu is often bottom centred. I hate it. And sometimes, you are in a submenu, but it doesn’t look like you’re in a submenu, so you sit there thinking, wtf where is the options button prompt. Button mapping options are, too many to list. You can map the world of shit. It extends all the way to weird and wonderful replay controls, and even individual camera location options.
Now, 5 hours in, isn’t enough to give a definitive review. So let’s look at it like this: having driven almost a 1000 hours in DR2.0, jumping into this game, you will feel at home, everything will translate in your brain, and you will notice the driving improvements. In this scenario, you’ll be smiling from ear to ear, like you’re 13 and your crush just walked up to you and started chatting with you.
Whoopsiedaisy, that’s a wall of text.
TL;DR EA WRC with wheel, good. Time spent optimising game and setup, is well worth it. Easy left, caution rock inside
