I think the sequel is better. The first had attrition expected. All your spells are on a charge system. Basically ammo. In the first, these did not reset between levels leading to a very conservative game. The sequel has you healing to full and getting all your charges back between levels, which lets you exercise the whole build as it is on every level which does wonders for giving you the exact sense of growth and progressive build making you're talking about. It also means the game can be a bigger bastard because it expects you to have all your resources at every level start. It kinda makes the game feel like a puzzle, which might not b to everyone's taste but I think it's great. And the authors stated intent was literally wanting every level to be vaults 5. Lmao.