I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here about what Mystic Realm is, and what it's about. Mystic Realm is a dated level pack from the Final Demo days of SRB2. We had two bosses, a few enemies, and three zones, of which only three acts are even remaining in the game in 2.1. The level design at the time didn't have much in the way of level gimmicks, and much of what makes SRB2 what it is today didn't exist. Mystic Realm was made in that environment, where I looked at what tools I had at the time and built stages around them. While it might sound silly now, at the time SRB2 didn't have a lava stage or a water stage. Aerial Garden was the first stage released for SRB2 to even include bottomless pits!
Thus, Mystic Realm was designed with a very different design than SRB2 2.X. Mystic Realm uses the tools I had available to create what was at the time the biggest package of SRB2 content. While gimmicks like "lava", "ice", and "water" sound overly simple now in the light of 2.0's additions, at the time it provided a lot more variety than the vanilla game had. The rest of the package was rounded out with platforming, enemies, and a large emphasis on exploration for secrets. Mystic Realm assumed that you had played 1.X's vanilla campaign already, and therefore knew how the enemies functioned already and wanted more challenging content. This meant that I used some of the enemies in situations that many people object to, such as on the landing area for springs. I don't consider this problematic as long as the player gets a proper view of the landing area before landing. The patches of MR have removed most of the instances where it was legitimately blind, and I've fixed a few more in Neo Mystic Realm, but when you can see what's going on, I don't consider placing enemies that way to be "cheap".
Neo Mystic Realm fixes some of the problematic mistakes of Mystic Realm's design, but it does not change the core of what Mystic Realm is. NMR is still about basic platforming with enemies and an emphasis on exploration. In fact, thanks to the inclusion of some of 2.0's enemies, you'll probably find the enemy placement even MORE mean in many locations. If you want challenging basic platforming that tests your ability to handle enemies while navigating narrow platforms, Neo Mystic Realm won't disappoint.