Ugh...the more I think about the perspective the more my head hurts.
Doing it your way looks heaps better for that static image but it makes so many extra tiles that can only be used in certain places and not in others or there will be some nasty perspective conflicts.
Especially the way your pillars have 2 sets of perpsective.
The problem amplified by this game's resolution being higher than Zelda, so we have potential for more conflicts visible at one time.
Here's an example of how my tiles work now with the outside corners added in:

Simple solution would be to simply not design rooms like this but the coder seems to like these outside corners.
Or I could simply do the pillars on the corners instead as Pypes suggested, making perspective along walls and doors much easier to fudge.

Yeah, there's quite a few caveats; scrolling breaks the illusion as does the internal walls/any large features that would have to be treated case-by-case for best result; works great on the original but has to be planned around if you want it. I think Minish Cap on GBA actually does use perspective with internal walls and it looks a bit odd. You could actually try all fully top down walls internally (no side visible) and that could work ok, but as you say, easy to snowball into various tiling issues and it's effort that might be better expended elsewhere...

Like a kickass grand entrance! Have you an idea of the kind of period/style you want? I have a massive ref. folder somewhere; fairly organised. You could take up more of the screen for effect, I think, or maybe try some perspective there instead, as a one-off; this Chrono Trigger beaut was recommended to me the other day.

Edit - ''but with a straight 3/4 perspective'', ah right there's always good 'ol Seiken Densetsu 3. (all maps here)

Alright, so you don't need another edit to the first guy , but in my defence I started it the other day so here it be :



There was other stuff but mainly design & pose; +1 Alcopopstar in that I'm not getting much sense of character; good, bad, strong, weak,confident, timid etc. Seems to be looking two places at once (intentional with mech. eye? not sure it looks dead, is ambiguous), and his pose, esp. arms are pretty stiff, action figure like; could be more engaging. You know this already & the girl looks more interesting.

I changed the orientation of the head 'cos it felt opposed to the line of his body also bit of contrapposto, and the bell bottom coat-tails I thought looked a bit Marilyn Monroe updraft . The rest was trying to focus attention on the face and unique features ie. sweet Colossus hand.

What type of character is the girl?

Thanks dood. Less Skeletor, more Sauron this round , a bunch tighter and more coherent but not as much fun perhaps? The spewing skeleboobs were great if odd, gonna jump on the bandwagon in saying regular-ish servile girls can't measure up to that! it's a little predictable, less genre homage, more rerun; there's more potential there imo. Elements individually are all cool but I feel like some bit of more overt narrative/punchline is lacking.

Still not a lot of convincing lighting or depth; At x1 (size it has to be on my screen here actually) I can't really appreciate the majority of the internal rendering. I guess this is partly stylistic but you could retain that flat graphic punchiness with bits of stronger but localised rendering on flats rather than pour work into more inconsequent patterning. 

New composition does tighten up that triangle but feels a bit stiff/static compared with the floaty potential of the first, I think. Perspective wise he's either falling off his throne or we're looking down on him, but it's not really clear; up shot would be the natural choice for demonstrating domination, power etc, didn't edit 'cos I changed too much stuff already . More foreground elements/overlap as Wolf for sure, also.

Ta, Ryu!

They aren't meant to be displayed next to each other or anything like that, so it isn't that important that they share all of these features. The characters are already pictured in different sizes and so on anyway. They aren't even in the same "dimension" as a matter of fact, well you probably guessed so already.

Surely you're aiming for a consistent aesthetic though? I did think maybe you were differentiating two different worlds but horse cab guy seemed consistent with sword girl's period fantasy thing? I was going to have crack at this card but gave up 'cos my attempts at old anime faces looked ridiculous .

I had a go at the things I mentioned of the previous instead (maybe you're sick of that one now though! ), namely those mismatched arms; I shortened the near and made more room for the far by pulling it out and back. The new foreshortened sword looked more like a taper from the hilt to me; it would have been pretty huge and the character itself is in much shallower space.

I was trying to get other stuff done but this looked like too much fun! No idea what's going on mind (the vomiting mecha skull succubus?)

I thought the whole thing was really low key and quite flat so I cranked those lights a lot, highlights absolutely everywhere 'cos slimy greasy nasty. Nothing in the foreground so opportunity for large area of light, defining the lightsource as top down (not much indication before) thought pool of blood appropriate .

Second Ai on comp; I think the scales mess up that sweet Frazetta triangle thing you had going and I made the focal points much more contrasted, also lines swooshier. I had blood on badguy's skull and the pink thing out the mouth is his tongue; they seem to have gotten lost in the mirroring somewhere .



*I meant to have the bats pulling the bird apart but couldn't think of a nice clear way to do it off the cuff (maybe pulling on chains or something?).