There's no character portraits either, around a quarter the screen is taken up by the status bar. The character sprites aren't as nice, nor are the environments as detailed. Dragon Slayer has much better music, balance, and general design though.
I don't know if I totally agree with that. They are very different, and I don't know if I'm just speaking from a prospective of a dude that loves Falcom- and this game has a bit of an Ys feel to it, BUT they each have a special charm to them.
From a gameplay standpoint, Dragon Slayer has seamless transitions from roaming to battle sequences, while CF2 has terrible random battles that can completely throw off your direction when roaming about.
I would say DS has far better gameplay and playability while CF2 has slightly better presentation.