PF2e tries to have it both ways:

• If you meet or beat the AC, you hit. If you exceed the AC by 10 or more (for example, roll a 25 to hit an AC 15) you crit.

• If you roll under the AC, you miss. If you roll less than 10 under the AC (for example, roll an adjusted 4 to hit an AC 15), you critically miss.

• Rolling a natural 20 increases your level of success by one step (a crit fail becomes a normal fail, a fail becomes a success, a success becomes a critical hit).

• Rolling a natural 1 decreases your level of success by one step (a crit becomes a normal hit, a hit becomes a miss, a miss becomes a crit fail).

In most encounters that are properly balanced for the players, a natural 20 and a natural 1 function like they do in D&D.

But when you're out of the proper range of balanced encounters, you start to get into the really fun territory, where threats feel more epic. Can a novice archer shoot the ominous black knight? Maybe! Maybe not, and even rolling a natural 20 merely upgrades their crit miss to a regular miss. Uh oh. That means it's time to run.

Maybe, if you work together with your party and stack on enough buffs and aids as you can manage, you can eke out a normal hit on an otherwise impossible enemy. That makes it even more exciting, because then you have a very remote chance to actually crit as well! Any +1 you get from any source increases your chance to hit by 5%, but it also increases your chance to crit by 5%. That means that a goblin with a dagger is a real threat, especially if he has friends, because you might be able to hit his buddies with a 4 on the die, but he could definitely work together with his friends to get a crit on you. And if he has a dagger with runes on it, or poison, or something like that, your day just got really bad.

Your mileage may vary if that works for you or not, but it works for me. I think it's a pretty elegant system.