Traveling is significantly more of an adventure for the players, with various things available for characters to do as they journey. You can hunt, cook, keep watch, and so forth - it is part of the daily routine. Managing supply (food and water) resources is also important during travel.
I was quite frustrated about this with D&D. For example, despite having the Outlander background, additional time (i.e. distraction from traveling with slower travel time) would have been required to gather food and fresh water. That was a reasonable DM ruling under the circumstances. Ultimately, it became something that we mostly glossed over.
In general, the character classes seem better designed. Fewer fallow levels, more utility skills, and somewhat less opportunity to level dip and pick up a bunch of power that made for multi-classed excessive power-gaming - there's still some opportunity to do that, but it is less. There's also more reason to stay single-classed, as the classes progress more consistently in power at higher levels.
Combats are still fairly similar from a spell caster perspective. I think there's more to do as a martial class with maneuvers. I gather that monsters are more consistent with their CR, but I'm not a DM and haven't looked through it - just repeating what I've read in the forums.