I went in to the Nintendo World Store to play today. I haven't seen too much Sheik info out yet, so after trying her out on the 3DS I thought I'd share some things, because I really liked what I saw.
First off - the 3DS demo was a single player experience where I got 5 minutes to go through Smash Run (essentially running around killing monsters and gaining buffs) and at the end of it I was put up against 3 other CPUs. This was the only way to demo the 3DS version, and Sheik is only available in the 3DS version.
Naturally, the whole premise of the demo to me was "I have 5 minutes to mess around with Sheik without 3 other players probably trying to kill me on a small platform." So I tested a few things in isolated sectors before receiving any movement buffs, and then went on to test attacks on enemies.
Let me first say, it's hard to get a grasp on how strong her attacks are when hitting monsters and not smash characters. They behave differently. The only real opportunity I had to test Sheik's power was during the FFA at the end, and in this case all CPUs and myself had various degrees of power, defense, speed, jump, etc buffs. I can say she felt much stronger than Brawl, but it doesn't mean much when buffs are involved.
So let's get to the juicy stuff. Her mobility is fantastic. Overall, save for the lack of dash-dancing and wavedashing, Sheik feels much closer to her Melee self than her Brawl self. All of my aerials short hopped landed with virtually no lag, save for dair. Dair still has that straight-down effect as it did in Brawl but has a much shorter start-up animation and also falls significantly faster than in Brawl. Furthermore, the landing lag of dair, even when initiated rather close to the stage, is shorter.
Her side-B is completely out of player control as far as I could tell. I tried aiming it, I tried holding B to time explosions. I tried anything I could think of. It simply flies in it's set path, lands, then flies up and blows up. When I did it in the air, it would blow up after a set amount of time in the air if it didn't land soon enough. The range on the explosion seems more than reasonable, and more than what one would expect.
Her down-B is essentially ZSS' down-B, but it always has a hitbox at the end. You don't input any attack button. It's direction can be controlled right/left regardless of where Sheik is facing or moving, but the path seems more or less set. The hitbox is further different from ZSS in that if it connects with a target, shield or not, it will bounce off after delivering the hit - essentially making it relatively safe on shield as a first impression. It also has decent knockback. I think it was mentioned before, but the down-B will grab the ledge if being used to recover.
Her up-B seemed more or less the same as Brawl. I wasn't able to test the strength of the explosion.
Needles can be stored by shielding, like usual. They function like they did in Brawl, where you tap to begin charging and tap again to fire. Needle Canceling is back! Landing while shooting needles resulted in no noticeable lag, both isolated and when hitting a target. I was able to land whilst shooting needles and go right into a grab.
In general, her ftilt is still amazing, her smashes are the same, and she functions as one would expect. As with the rest of the cast, her fall speed is significantly faster. Her animations for the fair, nair, bair, uair all seemed polished with more details although they are functionally the same.
Hope that helps. I have to say though, the 3DS version definitely feels more polished than the WiiU version in terms of character movement, attack/special landing lag, expected knockback. I had no trouble comboing the CPUs from dthrow to a cocktail of ftilts and aerials (this WITH the buffs). Considering the 3DS version is the more complete product (and feels like it) I think it's safe to say we have a solid Smash game ahead of us.
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