Hello SWOT. I'll offer you some crits.
In some ways, I think the earlier version was better. The mask had more character, and you didn't have much dithering.
I made an edit.

To summarize:
*
40 colors is too many for a piece this small. I reduced it to 14 colors.
* Your arms were way too short, so the droopy coat sleeves thing really didn't work. Making the arms longer makes the effect believable.
* There were too many near black colors.
* You seem to not share color ramps between the different pieces of your sprite. This hurts the unity a bit.
* The mask needs to be more mask-like, by making the hair go behind the mask, and by making the edges of the mask more clear.
That said, the character is neat, it just needs more work! Hopefully you can make progress towards this. I'd say, start with better color selection and shading. Then worry about the other elements, like the anatomy.