I feel the arts in XC2 have significantly more effects and strategy to them than XC1.

I also wasn't just waiting for cooldowns in XC2. I was building arts to build multi level combos, then planning which order of multi level combos to hit with (all of which are hype as fuck to pull off and look great visually). Planning that order based on the different effects they have, and the best order to lay elemental orbs. Then hitting that charge attack to get as full of a burst as I could. And testing my self to hit the fuller burst for an even greater Overkill reward.

Every step of that for me was active, exciting, interesting, and fun.

Whereas in XC1 I was only waiting for arts to cool down to use the same three in the same order over and over until the monster was dead. The game had Chain Attacks, which were not fund or good to me because most of the time they hit like four or maybe five times since it's so RNG based. Which wasn't worth giving up picking up KO-ed characters.