0:17 the problem you're lamenting here wasn't possible in SotN days: camera handling and connection with ground.
0:22 actually the statue looks nothing like marble or plaster, it's just too shiny...
0:26 indeed that bulging is bad.
0:30 here again, the problem is what we can call a "cutscene problem". We can agree that zooming on these models to have a kind of narration is not good. SoTN never does this of course, but the Rondo remake does the exact same thing at every boss approach, and with the same, not spectacular results. I hope we can agree though that this isn't the main dish, it's complementary cutscenes.
0:34 see 0:26
0:38 see 0:30
0:40 "These gameplay scenes actually looks decent." big surprise here: that's supposed to be the 95% of the time you'll spend with the game. Once the skippable clumsy cutscenes are over, this decency is the main bulk of the game. I'm seeing it in motion for the first time here to answer you, and I don't think it looks half bad - certainly on the average of what UGnG and DracX PSP have to offer. No 2D "splendor", but we ruled that out
0:47 bosses seems to sum on them two kinds of issues: low poly and cutscene-like zoomed effects.
0:50 I have a terrible confession to make here: my portrait will annoy the lot of you as well
0:53 I concur on the village badness. But this also means the castle interiors are better than this, and hopefully we'll get more castle than else...
0:54 there is a... stone arch supporting that torch? but it's poorly done, agree.
0:56 I agree, it seems it's very difficult to restitute the correct visual feel of materials with 3D graphics. The glossiness of it all is jarring. With a bit of luck, some of it may be corrected on-the-fly (seems mostly a lighting of surfaces issue). Regrettably, PSP low-poly graphics had the major advantage to be gloss and shiny-free.
0:58 again, to nitpick, that stone doesn't really feel like stone. But oh well. I think whenever you freeze the action, you get disappointed, but in motion of it all, It's passable. In its style. (remember, no bringing back the splendor or old times).
1:02, 1:13 gripes about bad cutscenes.
Ok, in my book, the segment 0:40~1:00 gets a pass. Nothing spectacular, and nothing comparable to the snowy backdrops of Dawn of Sorrow that you brought in, but flows reasonably in motion and looks on the level of DracX or UGnG. Which was to be the realistic expectation. Not a lavishly handcrafted pixelated masterpiece (we got Henk Nieborg, Konjak for those), but an update of what Iga had tried on the PSP, with the unwelcome side effect that time has passed and the same approach feels inevitably more dated in the PS4pro 4k days than it did in 2007 (when it was already, make no mistake, a sort of "retro-flavored" approach). Alas, that was the approach they settled for at the *day one* of campaign, and not even ten millions would significantly change the outcome: 3D zoomed in boots would still feel like floating on ground textures, and bosses cutscenes would still feel like a second-rate use of an engine which is being optimised to do something else (to render decently what you see between 0:40 and 1:00, that is).
I'd say the flaws, and the high points,
what works and what doesn't mimics to an uncanny extent what you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIBRO8MFK0Y
we could have fun dissecting this video scene by scene too.