Sure was.
To continue, there is now real time environmental shadows, which the first version did not have. Also, areas give a greater sense of freedom, seeing as we now more often can navigate obstacles via the third dimension instead of being stopped by a knee-high rock. The first version felt a lot more claustrophobic. Especially the black shroud, which was in my opinion one of the most terribly designed areas ever put into a final fantasy game.
The general feel of uniqueness is a lot greater now, because there are a lot fewer large copy/pasted areas. Reusing textures is fine, reusing rocks here and there is fine, reusing trees here and there is also fine. However, if you take an entire 20x20x20 meters block of geometry and textures and practically photo-copy it and paste it into the same area just 100 meters away from where it was first used, rotated maybe 30 degrees, that's just... terrible. Almost the entire old black shroud was created in this way, and I am pretty sure I could count the amount of different pieces used using only my fingers, and this is for an area that in real life would be about... I dunno, several square kilometers.
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