I felt that the battle system, while very different, was still very fun, and I felt was just a little more engaging

I still don't get why people see it as a successor, the battle systems have nothing in common with each other, they clearly didn't focus on making the game similar to TTYD.

This isn't attacking you but this is such a common thing that I've heard and I don't understand it at all. I understand liking the new games, I understand hating the old ones, but I can't at all understand why someone would say that TOK is a successor TTYD or that it's closer to TTYD than Sticker Star and Color Splash when playing all 3 games. It feels like people say it's a successor just because they think the game is good. Maybe I just disagree on what "successor" means?