Since the character can choose the appearance, he can choose from any of the 8 (possibly more later) regular hairstyles available and a couple of the short beards. However, once a hairstyle is chosen for the main character, it gets "locked" in that no other character can take that hairstyle.
As for readability - these are not meant to be seen at low sizes, else i would not include the level of details they have. What resolution do you have? your 1x and 2x could be half the size of mine. I find than an appropriate size for these guys is about 3cm high on my screen (2x for my res), and I have no trouble (at all) telling what they wear, nor do passersby. Based on the very specific references to the pieces of clothing people have made, I can only assume that this is not a widespread problem.
The game also is meant to be played either on extremely clear monitors (a decent LCD) or for CRT users (and just oldschool fans in general), a fullscreen version. Even on a *very* blurry resizing to what is on my computer full screen (8/3rds of the original size), it remains pretty clear to me.
With that in mind, does it still have readability issues? More importantly, do other users have readability issues?
In other news, I've half given up looking for a portraitist, so I have decided to go with the ultra-simple ultra-cliche manga style for the faces; i'm not proud but it's what we can do, it fits with the sprites, and it still has pretty good mass appeal.
Here is my first WIP of a particularly boyish face with 2 of the different hairstyles on the set
Portraits will be made of a base shape (same shape for all), a hairstyle, a mouth and chin style (includes beards), a nose style, and an eye style. each mouth and eye style *may* end up with variants to deal with emotion, depending on what Fil wants. I know it's popular but i find that changing portraits with emotion = tacky and that it actually robs dialogue of it's value by drawing attention the face instead of the writing and the actual situation, cramming a myriad of emotions into 3-4 different images *just in case* the player didn't know that the character was angry at the bad guy. [/rant]