Much better.

Combat is faster paced and a 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.