While I haven't really played 0.2 yet due to obvious reasons like simply not owning it or even owning a Ps4 but I have seen A LOT of different playthroughs of the game on various difficulties by different channels and I can say from all of that gameplay I have watched, with the standard MP or the Crit damage buff, 0.2 would be a hell of a lot easier.
So from what I have seen, by the end-game, it seems that Aqua's Firagun can deal almost half a bar of damage to a boss. Now I dunno about you but applying a damage buff to increase the already large about of damage you can deal seems fairly...broken. Now of couse lets assume the Damage Buff was actually noticeable like it was in KH2FM, one would expect Firagun to at least deal a little bit more then 1/2 a bar of HP, assuming we had the Normal amount of MP in Critical Mode, that would litterally just mean the only downside to playing Critical Mode is that you have 1/2 HP and 1/2 exp gained and possibly the enemy attack patterns would be more aggressive. And then you apply the damage buff to 0.2 and BAM, your Tier 4 spells turn into Balloonra.
Now of course that was me just mainly talking about one of the Magic options but even if they consume a lot of MP practically making it so they cannot be used often during a fight limiting your damage options...at least they are kind of useful?
Magic in KH2 was awful! Besides Cure, Reflect was pretty much the only good one out of the bunch!...and they made it abusable as hell. The Firaga, Blizzaga and Thundaga commands had barely any use at all besides a few boss battles mainly the Data Battles in which, thanks to Wisdom and Final Form made them completely abusable because Critical Modes 1/2 MP barely made me feel theres any difference. Oh, and the Magnet spells were COMPLETELY useless! I wouldn't exactly praise KH2FM's Critical Mode seeing as the combat in KH2 was litterally just constantly dodging and reflecting.
The only thing imo which KH2 improved over KH1 was the Revenge Values which 0.2 did thankfully adapt as well. Yes, a few of the enemies were unstaggerable but it doesn't even matter much as they actually give you time to fet a combo in.
e.g The final Devil's Wave in it's final phase, once you actually manage to get inside it, you have enough time to get in 2-3 combo's before getting flung out. And thats mainly just the big doods, smaller heartless like the Shadows gets staggered and even the Aqua mirror boss gets staggered as well and retaliates after 1-2 combo's.
Also it should be a good thing that enemies are harder to predict as it simply makes them harder to exploit or cheese them which is kind of a good thing. They all still have their patterns, just now it requires more thought process to counter them.
I guess all I'm saying from my big wall of text is that maybe it's not all as bad as it seems and that several of the things they did like the high cost of magic may seem bad but was kind of their own way of balancing the game and preventing it from becoming too easy. Of couse, like I mentioned before, I haven't actually played the game so I can't really talk much from experience. I'm only necessarily saying what I picked up from footage and my opinion may change drastically once I manage to actually ply the game but yeah thats how I see it imo. But hey, atleast it was an improvement over BBS's and DDD's Crit modes which were AWFUL. If 0.2 can improve over the last 2 enttries (ignoring Re:Coded) then perhaps KH3 can improve over 0.2