They are not worse mechanics from FF8 because they are actually mechanics and not just shoving a number into another number and pretending it's complicated.
Sorry, believe it or not I just replayed FF8 recently, and in the full lucidness of my adulthood I was able to truly internalize how bad it is at.... pretty much everything.
To come back around to your idea, they remastered Chrono Cross not too long ago. It's on PC and Switch i think? So if you did think you wanted to check it out no time is better than now.