One thing I don't like is how easy it is to access the different Digivolutions in Cyber Sleuth, I'm sure it gets harder once I get to Mega but so far it's been very easy to basically get every Digimon I've wanted except those locked through Items. At most I've had to feed them some meat to raise the CAM%, and the ABI requirements are basically just grinding.
Digimon World 1's biggest strength for me, and probably the reason it pushed so many people away, was how challenging it was to get the Digimon you wanted and how you had to work for your favorites. In Cyber Sleuth by the first few hours I'd already gathered the entire Adventure, 02, and Tamers Champions.
But Cyber Sleuth is really lacking in depth---the game is pretty much down to four things: you'll explore dungeons with randomly encountered enemies, said dungeons apparently start to repeat later on; you'll "investigate" by talking to NPCs with a system that's kind of like a light version of the Psyche Locks from Phoenix Wright, though it basically boils down to simply talking to every NPC in a given area; you'll grind Digimon to evolve them, then de-evolve them, then re-evolve them again, this is honestly the main draw of the game for a Digimon fan IMO and pretty easy once you score three PlatinumSukamon; finally the battle system most of the time can be set to Auto-Battle so you can progress through the story and gain access to more Digimon, only really having to focus when it comes to the Bosses.
It's really no less linear than Pokemon except for the addition of sidequest, but none of them I've done have been particularly interesting and some of them have the caveat of requiring you to wait hours in real life for the chance to unlock them. The best part about Cyber Sleuth is the Digimon, so I feel if you like Digimon you'll like it, and if you like a more in-depth story in your JRPGs (that has some fun ideas but is still mostly generic anime without some of the better writing seen in the original Digimon Adventure) you'll appreciate it compared to Pokemon, but it's really a low bar here people are setting.