Combat is faster paced and way more fun, dungeons are shorter (maybe even too short) and the enemies are more interesting, there aren’t really any “mobs”, they are all sort of mini-bosses that you need to be careful around as they hit really hard. It also hit a nice spot of being challenging without being too hard - I got a few game overs but it never got to the point where I was frustrated by the difficulty.
When I finished the main story for Crymachina I was thinking “I could still keep playing this for a while before I got bored of the gameplay” despite replaying several stages for extra gear/XP.