SoM style has always been really hard to sprite, I recommend you trying something easier, TFS, but I must admit that It looks really good
Bodies, I can work with...It's the heads...I can never seem to get the hang of 'em.
I wish my old laptop never broke, I had a sheet of Link in Secret of Mana style 100% original by me that was 45% complete.
Yes, Secret of Mana is very different from Sword of Mana by terms of graphics, sort of.
Secret used tiles and animations for it's backgrounds. Sword uses probably tiles,but looks to be more of art.
Secret also has about 2x-3x the animations of the main character than Sword.
If only I could do the heads...