They are still arcade racers, but missing some features that made some older NFS games great like car tuning and customization.
Yep. They were kinda like racing RPG's, since you could upgrade your cars to the point where they were competitive in performance with a lot more expensive ones.
The difference between both the Dirt series and WRC series are: 1)WRC to me is a bit more enjoyable but a lot less realistic than Dirt. 2)The handling of the cars in Dirt tend to mimic their real-life counterparts better than WRC. 3) Some of the courses in WRC - especially WRC6 are better looking than some of the courses in Dirt in my opinion. It all comes down to preference really. I do consider Dirt to be the better rally title overall but WRC is a very solid and enjoyable alternative.