Even if it were finalized I still wouldn't see the point... It's highly similar to playing Doom source ports with filtering, totally butchers the graphics for me

That's like saying what was the point to Carmageddon -hires and Carmageddon glide. Obviously it was finished product. Point is that I bet it didn't look so great in beta stages.

Doesn't matter if beta or not. It's a bit of a personal preference too. 2.5D engines certainly are not very suited for it, because not much is gained by smoothing out flat sprites.

Even in a lot of real 3D games at this time unfiltered textures could appear as more detailed if done right. Basically compare late-gen PS1 titles to N64 ones.