These shaders and image effects wont help for 2D, it's for 3D. I would assume you'd see awkward results with 2D, although it could work I suppose with painted assets and stuff, could be cool.
Yeah, I did a few experiments w/2d and it does suck. Unless you did some kind of fluid, always-moving, dynamic thing in 2d.
Having done a fair amount of Unity stuff in 3d, I've been craving some nice, traditional pixel-perfect 2d, and I think that the Godot engine is my new go to tool for that.
Also just tried out ClickTeam Fusion 2.5 (get on Humble currently) - while it feels older and is definitely more basic than others, it seems a pretty good way to make more authentic, older games.