What's with the x's? Anyways, compared to FF1's remake, FF2 got the better part of the deal in my opinion. It's still a relatively difficult game compared to DoS which is just a joke. Of course if you're feeling REALLY hissy about it you could always go play the NES rom.
O and for the record I've been checking Boss HP/other stats against the original version compared to the GBA, and nearly every value is the same. So no, the monsters did not get downgraded.