I would agree it was more of a touch up, but that's because the DS doesn't have the same issues as the GBA did. Its why the music quality is also spot on, they were even able to use the unused tracks from the OST for the new areas.

As for the cutscenes, I think they were amusing, but I always found it annoying they didn't replace the original scene they modeled after, so you ended up effectively watching the same scene twice. Even then, I actually prefer the original 16-bit scenes over the anime cutscenes, so I tend to disable them in my playthroughs.