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In my opinion no real progress has been made from the first iteration. Still too busy and no visual priority.

To me the new color palette is much better, and I don't think the ladder is a problem; games often have stuff like that and no one questions it. I think the pixelling could be cleaned up on just about all the tiles. It's kind of sloppy and there are noisy single pixels. It seems everything has specular highlights, though most of them wouldn't be so shiny.

Right now the scene looks very disjointed--the characters seems placed haphazardly, not centralized as they would be for a title-screen. I think you're trying to pack too much action into the scene, also. He's blowing on his pronged hand, off to the side, and casually punching the egg man with the other hand--but exerting no body-force to do so.

I would simplify the scene and center it--put the pronged hand in front of him rather than off to the side. An idea like this:

The latest is a serious step backwards. You've lost the planes of the face--it's become all muddy. It's better to keep the dark tones in there to designate shape.

I understand the frustration, but your images just seem to be in the purgatory of no one knowing what critiques to give or what to say. I've seen every new post in this topic, but never felt I had anything to contribute.