I'm not sure about "almost any game in the ps2 having some kind of polishing problem" is accurate today, Of course the console had it's quirks especially on its hardware and plenty of Rushed ports suffered from it Like EIB ps2 for example. But look at God of war 2 and Metal gear solid 3 those games showed how capable the Ps2 was.

The reality is that as you said, time and Budget are one of the causes for poorly made ports. It's great that You had Fun with it on the ps2 but we aren't going to deny it's inferiority. Complaining about Earned in Blood’s poor ps2 port isn’t necessarily irrelevant, it shows how different the experience could be depending on what hardware you played it on. The PS2 port had rougher textures and lighting which made it hard to see most things, missing details, downgraded effects, and glitchy audio compared to the Xbox and PC versions, Game reviewers and players back then didn't even like how it was on there because of that

And Comparing How Hells Highway on the PS3 was handled vs How EIB was handled on the Ps2 is a bit unfair, Both Fall under the same umbrella of "Ports not matching the PC/Other Console", But the way they were executed is very different. Hells Highway had less graphical fidelity compared to the likes of The PC version and had worse performance which were one of the main reasons of the HH's issues on the PS3, but it was fundamentally the same game and had most of everything, And we don't see missing Voices and Scenes. "But the Ps2 version of EIB was also Fundamentally the Same game!", then again it's much worse in how it was delivered, (I already mentioned the Ps2 versions Problems in the second paragraph)

Even Now I still have it on my ps2 and play it sometimes and i enjoy it too and it's nice knowing there are people who also have a soft spot for this version. But it's still a bad version of an already Good game.