So finally got home and booted up the game, my impressions:
The first thing I did was watch the Vampire War prologue on the main menu, which looks great on dat OLED.
Graphically, it looked much better then I thought. Sure, the textures and models are Σ Plus quality (and regularly worse in the case of textures) but it looks like a scaled down Σ2 and you tend not to notice the imperfections during combat.
The "gore" effects are definitely not as prominent as NG2's ketchupy fountains but they're still more satisfying then the purple mist vomit. Chunks of the enemy get splattered on the wall, but they fade after a few seconds. Bodies and limbs take almost twice as much time to disappear.
The game's default screen settings make it look faded out, so I suggest you bump up the contrast a bit and lower the gamma and brightness.
The bosses look and play great, despite the 30fps. I will admit that when I first booted up the game, my initial impressions were
very negative. I felt like could barely control Ryu and the framerate almost seemed lower then 30fps. After a bit of time, I started adjusting and now have no issues with the framerate (which I directly compared with Σ Plus using a friend's Vita to discover that they run at the same framerate). If you could play through Σ Plus on Master Ninja and enjoy it, then you should enjoy this too.
The controls are about as responsive as Σ Plus, so take what you will from that. Being able to shoot the bow in midair by tapping anywhere on the touch screen is a nice addition imo, and Ninpo doesn't seem to have any gimmicks attached to it. Being able to to disable back touch and motion controls shows that at least Team Ninja learned from Σ Plus.
So far, I haven't encountered noticeable slowdown (playing through Chapter 2 atm). The part in Tokyo City with the cherry blossom trees did slow down, but not nearly as much as Razor's Edge does. In fact, I discovered that the slowdown in generally wasn't too bothersome, at least not in comparison to the actual choppiness of games like Assassin's Creed III Liberation.
EDIT: Though I should mention that there seems to be a micro-stutter every time something gory happens.
The sub-native res didn't bother me as much as I thought. Whatever resolution this game runs at with nothing on screen, it's close to native as the visuals are still fairly crisp.
The resolution does seem to drop a lot though. It drops whenever the game loads something like a menu, and when the scene is too graphically taxing.
This area in Chapter 2 was the first "problem area" I came across so far. The res dropped and stayed low the entire fight, making everything a muddy mess. The rest of the chapter has been going well though.
Loading times seem faster then Σ2, especially when switching weapons. Mid-chapter loading happens in the usual places.
Overall, I'm enjoying it. When I get to the Tag Missions, I may have a different story to tell but right now I have little complaints. It's portable Σ2 at 30fps, which is what I wanted and expected.
I'm definitely going to buy this digitally and give the retail copy to a friend.
EDIT: Lol, the Genshin Lunar loop defintely works.