I love the new Meteorae, conceptually.
The limited Zot timer forces you to cut out lots of the boring-but-safe plays, like exploring each level fully, waiting for health to restore after each battle, or pillar-dancing.
And the exploration healing cuts into that, too. It makes it sane to run into unknown territory, especially in the middle of a battle. It rewards taking risks. And with the passive mapping ability, you do get a chance of guessing whether there could be monsters around the corner.

Of course, the ‘downside’ is that they’re freaking hard to play. I have yet to even reach one of the branches with a Meteoran, but I do wonder whether you’re supposed to descend the first few levels so quickly that you actually build up the Zot timer, so you have a chance of getting back out of those branches.