Tom was given a lot more dramatic material to work with, and he absolutely gave it his all this film. One of my favorite scenes was at the end when he's talking to MJ at the coffee shop and he notices her band aid. The look on his face, the bittersweet smile, leading to Peter making the final decision to not say anything about their relationship - that was emotionally moving for me.
I understand people were reasonably peeved about Tom's Peter up until this point feeling less like the Spider-Man they're familiar with, especially since a lot of Tom's Peter characterization and world was built around trying not to retread things that past Spider-Man films did - but with No Way Home, in hindsight I can see now and find it a pretty genius move to use the shared universe aspect to space out Tom!Peter's character development over several appearances in what is essentially a drawn out origin story into being Spider-Man utilizing completely different elements, instead of doing THE typical Spider-Man origin story. Raimi!Peter and Webb!Peter's movies were built around the trilogy model with the next movie not necessarily being a sure thing, so their development was focused and "condensed" in that they pretty much had to learn their lessons and be Spider-Man a lot sooner (of course, not having any other heroes around in their movies means they can't be anything but solo heroes by default, which helps their perception as being independent heroes compared to Tom!Peter). This version of the "origin" lets Tom!Peter be a Spider-Man that can play with some cool toys (like having multiple Spidey suits and hanging out with other heroes) in his high school era until it's time to grow out of it as he moves onto college and becomes an adult. I'm not sure if Marvel would do this if they had 100% control of Spider-Man from the start, but judging from their treatment of Tobey!Peter and Andrew!Peter, I think it's absolutely safe to say that they understand Spider-Man as a character and this path for Tom!Peter was a deliberate divergence from a typical Spider-Man portrayal.
Bring on the college trilogy, and hope that Marvel makes good on their promise for Tom!Peter to behave as an independent Spider-Man.