Worse. At least with waterfalls, you are starting from the end goal. In my experience, most Scrum is the worst of both worlds - you are kept on a rigid/bureaucratic process but are not allowed to think about the end state.

I recently had a kerfuffle with a manager when I brought up the idea of a novel solution to a time consuming problem and proposed doing a quick proof-of-concept. I was told not to work on anything until we have requirements.

"How will stakeholders know to submit requirements for something they don't know is possible?"

"Well, we can't to any work unless it is submitted for approval in an Agile way".