Very beautiful mockup, I like the BG a lot.

 I don't think so, both pieces are amazing.

 I've been trying to expand my comfort zone, because so much of my older stuff (not on PJ) tended to be really dark and murky in color choices.

I'm loving the slightly over-the-top pastel colors choices in this piece!  Especially the leaves!  Faved.  :)

 I'm certainly quite flattered by the sentiment, since you're pretty skilled yourself.

 The scenery is amazing!

No disrespect to a3um, but this really ought to be 1st for the month!

 This is awesome, I love chrono trigger.

Fantastic stuff, especially the leaves and rays of light in the background. :)

 OMG! This is perfect, lovely colors, funny shadows, your jobs is perfect.

@Carnivac:  Yeah, you're not the only one who finds JTBRPG gameplay to be brain dead.  I want to love those games, but unless they're FFTactics, the gameplay is too boring for me to stand.  It's like being forced to play tic-tac-toe; it requires no rewarding problem-solving brainwork, just attention.  Like working on an assembly-line.

Then again, this screams market opportunity.  I cannot be alone in wanting that kind of game.

 Yeah, what the hell, I think I'll tweak those shadows.

Edit:   Shadows tweaked.  Note to self:  next time I do something like this, bounce it off the forums before posting.

 Stunning.

This is gorgeous. I don't have any constructive crits that haven't already been pointed out so I'll just stick to the compliments. I really like this piece.

 HUD's kinda boring but goodness gracious this is wonderful.

top notch work here.

This is excellent. Feels just like a game.

Woahhh this is way too awesome. It's inspiring me to go back to a game i was working on. Thanks! 

I wish I could see this in a game in action because the animation is not smooth in my browser.  I think the area where the battle is takeing place should not have the plants or the plants should be trampled.  Now that you are finished, any plans to continue mocking up?

Certainly looks a lot better than the original SNES game.  Only real issue I have is that the characters could be refined a fair bit more as they look a little 'scrappy' and Marle's head doesn't look to me to really go with the rest of her body.  The background is delicious and I don't think I've ever used that word to describe pixel art before.  I would probably actually enjoy turn based RPGs if they looked more like that.  I'd still hate the actual gameplay of course but at least I could gaze at the nice pixels.

 terrible.  just terrible.  I don't see Frog anywhere >:(

Lovely work! The only thing is that the shadows being on top of the plants in the foreground really ruins the depth and makes the piece look flat. I might also decrease the difference in contrast between the sprites and the background. Great pixeling, though.

So rustic, yet so beautiful!

Absolutely gorgeous!

My main critique would be the foreground plants. They interfere with the sprite shadows in a very unpleasant way: they hide parts of plants which are obviously in front of them. The resulting impression is the sprites look disconnected from the ground.
I'd also recommend using a lighter tone for those shadows, depending of course if the sprites are supposed to be used on different bgs.

Pal, this is lovely! ;)

Good improvements! I think there are still some issues, but it's worth a fav

 :tips hat:  Thanks for the C&C.

Huge improvement.

Was just playing CT a few days ago -  my fave RPG. This is awesome.

HUD seems to be missing the timer bars per character. All I see is HP/MP.

 Thanks - yeah, that red was seriously out of control.  Sorry about that.

Definite improvement :)

 I've done an edit regarding the contrast business, and Super17's points.  (Also knocked the red channel down a bunch; this POS ASUS monitor of mine has some weakness in the red channel that calibration can't fix.  I should've vetted this against my laptop's screen at some point, but didn't get around to it.) 

I don't really agree that sprites in any game need to "pop", but if it's considered best practice around here, I'm not gonna argue.  Please don't take this statement as bait for exactly that; let's let it rest.

Yeah, as beautiful and detailed the background is...it spans the entire hue-spectrum, and with such high saturation and contrast - it leaves very little room in colorspace for the sprites to stand out. 

This is really beautiful and the charakters instantly reminded me of Chrono Trigger. The background and color choice is also very nice.

But I have to agree with the previous posts. In addition, I will point out some little things you could improve:

•  The movement of Chrono's sword is a bit weird, looks like the tip is bending, because at one frame, the sword looks different.
• Chrono's scabbard looks like it is jumping at his back, according to Marle's quiver which movement looks quite natural.
• All in all, Chrono's movemt looks a bit like you just moved some parts, rather then pixeled them new to fit them to their new position, especially the right tail of his tunic above his thigh.
• Marle's right arm (the bended one) looks too long, she could easily reach her knee with it. Or she is almost doing squats.
• Looks like one pixel below Marle's knee is stratching.
• The hair of the characters is the only thing which don't has an outline (maybe Marle's crossbow too, but can't tell exactly).
• The background is a bit rough at some places, espacially the bark of the trees could have some little AA.
• I'm not certain of the bright blue you used for the leaves, is a bit distracting. Maybe shift it slightly.

Oh well, that sounds like plenty of critique, but I want to show you with it, how much I like this piece. Keep it up!

i've seen this yesterday,totally awesome. :D 

 Is this what you're suggesting WRT gamma?  http://www.pasteall.org/pic/24541

 This is absolutely gorgeous, but I do agree with the others about the background being too dominant. It's such a shame to leave the piece like this! Just a little atmospheric perspective would solve everything :)

This is very well pixelled but has huge contrast issues. I'd both desaturate and lighten the background because at the moment it's fighting for dominance with the sprites and as nice as the background is to look at, that's really not what you want your background to be doing.

 That's really nice, but colors are burning my eyes sometimes. Might look fine on a gameboy with proper luminosity though. Good job 

 amazing work!

everything just beautyfull

only one thing - there is no difference in gamma between objects and background