What is your end goal? It is such a large piece, where are you going with it? At this point you have a lot of great detail on the buildings, but the sidewalks/streets/dock are just so large and wide open that even though they are well pixeled and detailed they look bland.

I think you might need to take a break from polishing what you have and start adding new assets. Start filling the streets with objects and maybe people eventually. After you have developed some more skills and filled up the environment more maybe then you might see ways of improving what you have now. The alternative would be calling this done for now and moving on to another piece.

New designs are an excellent improvement and balance of the previous iterations. Just from a design point, you might think of giving him a white shirt and maybe a bandana. More pirate themed instead a random shirtless guy. Plus having the bandana be blue would make the color scheme more consistent across his evolution. I like the ghost and goblins armor mechanic used in this way.

I'm liking the new character design. In terms of colors, I prefer the higher color count. However, I think the more important thing is how the character looks in the environment he is in and having him at last closely match the palette restrictions. So that would likely mean the more restricted character palette is better.

Some good points! Jury is not out yet, just seeing if it works before deciding.

Worked for Zelda2 & TMNT on the NES so lets see.

I was going to use those as examples of the multiple perspective not working... Nothing wrong with experimenting, I'm just so digging your horizontal tiles.

I will let the Angry Video Game nerd make my points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjUz8IT0CYg

Ugh, I'm so busy with work, freelance stuff and preparing to move out that I have no time to post here... so have some animations for one of the freelance project I'm working on

You are doing great stuff with the eyes and facial expression that really add to the animations.

Idle: A very slow and minor rustle to the cape might add a bit of movement to the rest of the sprite.

Crouch/Grab: Looks good. I will note that in other previews I have seen, that the pull animation that I suppose follows this I am not a fan off. Bending all the way over to pull is just physical very difficult and doesn't provide good leverage, and the animation look awkward.

Run: Animates well and I like the movement of the cape, hair, and glasses. She just don't look to be going very fast and is kind of skipping rather than running. If it is just a walk animation then it will probably work fine.

Roll: So if this is actually two animations, one for face planting (tripping) and the other for getting up after being knocked on her back, then they look great. If it is supposed to be a full roll animations, then it looks really awkward. She needs to be tucking her head in and scrunching into a ball if she wants to roll.

Jump: Amazing, spot on. Excellent use of stretching in your animation with the cape. Also nice details like the cape fluttering and her squinting one eye as if she is moving quickly. It adds a lot to the animation.

Attack Fall: From her stance and facial expression I'm guessing she is supposed to be holding a weapon as she is falling to attack. Looks good.

Fall: So you utilized the stretch well, but you need to use a bit more squash to really sell this animation. Often the stretching and squashing exaggerates proportions briefly, but instead you have this awesome cape to take advantage of. The cape should flair out more at the peak of her jump, but even more so when she lands she should crouch a little more and flair out the cape a good bit. I think you could do this without adding extending the animation so you still maintain really responsive controls.

Bow: I really like this animation. The bow pops in rather abruptly and could use an extra frame of reveal. This would slow down the attack animation a bit, but maybe that would actually be desirable from a gameplay perspective.

Not Featured:
Rope Climbing: I know Mega Man has established the tradition of looking at your character from the back while climbing, but I think with a rope Crown might look cool facing forward as she climbs up. Might be worth experimenting with.

Push: It might just be a wip animation in Zack's previews, but I feel like Crown needs to be leaning into the object a bit more. Again there needs to be some squash, and probably some stretch would help the pull animation.