The sun is so bright that even when a sliver of it is still showing, it's blinding. So a partial eclipse, even at 99%, just looks like the sun only a crescent instead of a circle. Oh and the shadows can look funny and you might notice it's a bit darker.

Then you get to totality and it is something new. It gets noticeably darker, first of all, but in a different way than normal. Not like a storm or night, it's eerie and hard to explain.

But you can also look at the sun without protection. And you don't see any of the main disc itself but you get a clear sight of what's around it: the waves of plasma coming off of the sun, moving while you watch.

After seeing totality, partial eclipses are now meh. In fact, once totality ended, there was still like an hour of partial eclipse left, but I didn't care, it was time to drive home. I won't even bother looking at future partial eclipses at home in the future, but I might fly out to a future total one. Seeing one made me understand how people who knew about them back in the day could use that to control those who didn't. It feels profound.