I was worried about that myself when I first started playing FF2 it was way to hard to beat the first time but the second time I actually beat it and have'nt touched it every since
But yeah they were probarly experimenting on it to see what the public would say. As far as I know everyone seems to enjoy the no lvl rule system because its provides a challenge to see how strong you can get without worrying about lvl and the final boss ( hint: he's very evil yet fun to beat
) But when FFIII came out in Japan( in the 90's mind you) they went back to the orginal lvl system.