If you want to get clean cuts on the top surface of woods, especially things with veneered faces like MDF or ply then yes, you’d want a downcut at the top surface, but not at the bottom (opposite problem) and not for the initial cuts as you want chips to come up out of the cut.
Using a compression or downcut for a light finishing pass makes a lot of sense though, I keep a Yonico 3310-SC (cheap on Amazon) for finishing passes on birch ply. (a compression cutter has upcut at the bottom and downcut at the top but needs to be run deep in the material to work, at least deeper than the upcut portion).
Take a look at this thread for more;